evening Bizet called his friends to come and listen. Around the piano
were Edouard Blau, Louis Gallet, and Jean Faure. Bizet had his score
before him--to common gaze a skeleton thing enough, for of
"accompaniment" there was but little. But to its creator it was well
alive, and he sang--in the poorest possible voice, it is true--the
whole thing through from beginning to end. Chorus, soprano, tenor,
bass, yea, even the choicer "bits" for orchestra--all came alike to
him; all were infused with life from the spirit that created them. It
was long past midnight when he ceased, and then they sat and talked
till dawn. All were enthusiastic, and in the opinion of Faure (given
three years later) this score was more than the equal of "Carmen." His
word is all we have for it, but it carries with it something of
conviction. He was no bad judge of a work. Anyway, no sooner had he
heard it than he set about securing its speedy production at the
Opéra. And he succeeded in so far that it was put down early on the
list. But Fate had yet to be reckoned with. She was not thus to be
baulked of her prey: she had dogged the footsteps of poor Bizet far
too zealously for that; and on the 28th October (less than a week
after he had put _finis_ to his work), she stepped in. On that day the
Opéra was burned down.
As for the score, it was laid aside, and of its ultimate lot we are in
ignorance. Inquiry on the part of Gallet seems to have elicited
nothing more definite than a courteous letter from M. Ludovic Halévy,
to the effect that he was quite free to dispose of the book to another
composer. "It was George's favourite," wrote his brother-in-law, "and
he had great hopes for it; but it was not to be."
Perhaps of all his powers Bizet's greatest was that of recuperation.
It would be wrong to say he did not know defeat; he knew it all too
well, but he never let it get the better of him. He was never without
his irons upon the fire, never without a project to fall back upon.
And perhaps it is not too much to say that he had no life outside his
art. This too may in truth be told of him: that in all the struggle
and the scramble, in all his fight with fortune, it was the sweeter
qualities of his nature that came uppermost. His strength of purpose
stood on a sound basis--a basis of confidence in, though not arrogance
of, his own power. Where he was most handicapped was in carrying on
his artistic progress _coram populo_. Had it been as gradual as most
men's--had it been but the acquiring of an ordinary experience--all
might have been well; he would probably have been accorded his niche
and would have occupied it. But he progressed by leaps and bounds, and
even then his ideal kept steadily miles ahead of his achievement. It
was for long a very will-o'-the-wisp for him. Now and again he caught
it, and it is at such moments that we have him at his best; but he can
be said only to have captured it completely--so far as we are in a
position to tell--in "L'Arlésienne" and certain parts of "Carmen." His
faculty of self-criticism was developed in such an extraordinary
degree as to baulk him. He loved this Don Rodrigue and thought it was
his masterwork, and that too at the time when "Carmen" must have been
well forward. We know then that the loss is not a small one.
It had not been alone the fate of the Opéra House that had stood in
the way. That institution had in course taken up its quarters at the
Salle Ventadour, and once installed there had proceeded with the
_répertoire_. But Bizet's "Rodrigue," although well backed by Fauré,
was pushed aside for others. The three names that it bore were all too
impotent; and when a new work was announced, it was "L'Esclave" of
Membrée that was seen to grace the bills, and not "Don Rodrigue."
Poor Bizet, disappointed and sore at heart, vanished to hide himself
once more by his beloved Seine. This time it was to Bougival he went.
M. Massenet had recently produced his "Marie Madeleine" and, curiously
enough, it had been successful. This seems to have spurred Bizet on to
emulation. With his usual happy knack of hitting on a subject, he
wrote off to Gallet, requesting him to do a book with Geneviève de
Paris--the holy Geneviève of legendary lore--for heroine. And Gallet,
accommodating creature that he was, forthwith proceeded to construct
his tableaux. Together they went off to Lamoureux and read the
synopsis to him. He approved it heartily, and Bizet got to work.
"Carmen" was then finished and was undergoing the usual stage of
adjournment _sine die_. Three times it had been put into rehearsal,
only to be withdrawn for apparently no reason, and poor Bizet was
wearying of opera and its ways. This sacred work was relief to him.
But hardly had he settled down to it when up came "Carmen" once again,
this time in good earnest. He was forced to leave "Geneviève" and come
to Paris for rehearsals. It was much against his inclination that he
did so, for his health was failing fast. For long he had suffered from
an abscess which had made his life a burden to him. Nor had his
terrible industry been without its effect upon his physique. He did
not know it, but he had sacrificed to his work the very things he had
worked for. He felt exhausted, enfeebled, shattered. Probably the
excitement of rehearsing "Carmen" kept him up the while; but it had
its after-effect, and the strain proved all the more disastrous. A
profound melancholy, too, had come over him; and do what he would he
could not beat it off. A young singer (some aspirant for lyric fame)
came one day to sing to him. "Ich grölle nicht" and "Aus der Heimath"
were chosen. "Quel chef d'oeuvre," said he, "mais quelle désolation,
c'est à vous donner la nostalgie de la mort." Then he sat down to the
piano and played the "Marche Funèbre" of Chopin. That was the frame of
mind he was in.
In his gayer moments he would often long for Italy. He had never
forgotten the happy days passed there with Guiraud. "I dreamed last
night" (he is writing to Guiraud) "that we were all at Naples,
installed in a most lovely villa, and living under a government purely
artistic. The Senate was made up by Beethoven, Michael Angelo,
Shakespeare, Giorgione, _e tutti quanti_. The National Guard was no
more. In place of it there was a huge orchestra of which Litolff was
the conductor. All suffrage was denied to idiots, humbugs, schemers,
and ignoramuses--that is to say, suffrage was cut down to the smallest
proportions imaginable. Geneviève was a little too amiable for Goethe,
but despite this trifling circumstance the awakening was terribly
bitter."
"Carmen" was produced at last, on the 3rd of March in that year
(1875). The Habanera--of which, by the way, he wrote for Mme.
Galli-Marié no less than thirteen versions before he came across, in
an old book, the one we know--the prelude to the second act, the
toreador song, and the quintett were encored. The rest fell absolutely
flat.
The blow was a terrific one to Bizet. He had dreamed of such a
different lot for "Carmen." Arm in arm with Guiraud he left the
theatre, and together they paced the streets of Paris until dawn.
Small wonder he felt bitter; and in vain the kindly Guiraud did his
best to comfort him. Had not "Don Juan," he argued, been accorded a
reception no whit better when it was produced in Vienna? and had not
poor Mozart said "I have written 'Don Juan' for myself and two of my
friends"? But he found no consolation in the fact. The press, too, cut
him to the quick. This "Carmen," said they, was immoral, _banale_; it
was all head and no heart; the composer had made up his mind to show
how learned he was, with the result that he was only dull and obscure.
Then again, the gipsy girl whose liaisons formed the subject of the
story was at best an odious creature; the actress's gestures were the
very incarnation of vice, there was something licentious even in the
tones of her voice; the composer evidently belonged to the school of
_civet sans lièvre_; there was no unity of style; it was not dramatic,
and could never live; in a word, there was no health in it.
Even Du Locle--who of all men should have supported it--played him
false. A minister of the Government wrote personally to the director
for a box for his family. Du Locle replied with an invitation to the
rehearsal, adding that he had rather that the minister came himself
before he brought his daughters.
Prostrate with it all, poor Bizet returned to Bougival. When forced to
give up "Geneviève," he had written to Gallet: "I shall give the whole
of May, June, and July to it." And now May was already come, and he
was in his bed. "Angine colossale," were the words he sent to Guiraud,
who was to have been with him the following Sunday. "Do not come as we
arranged; imagine, if you can, a double pedal, A flat, E flat,
straight through your head from left to right. This is how I am just
now."
He never wrote more than a few pages of "Geneviève." He got worse and
worse. But even so, the end came all too suddenly, and on the night of
the 2nd of June he died--died as nearly as possible at the exact
moment when Galli-Marié at the Opéra Comique was singing her song of
fate in the card scene of the third act of his "Carmen." The
coincidence was true enough. That night it was with difficulty that
she sung her song. Her nervousness, from some cause or another, was so
great that it was with the utmost effort she pronounced the words: "La
carte impitoyable; répétera la mort; encore, toujours la mort." On
finishing the scene, she fainted at the wings. Next morning came the
news of Bizet's death. And some friends said--because it was not meet
for them to see the body--that the poor fellow had killed himself.
Small wonder if it were so!
Six Drawings
By Aubrey Beardsley
I. II. III. The Comedy-Ballet of Marionnettes,
as performed by the troupe of the Théâtre-Impossible,
posed in three drawings
IV. Garçons de Café
V. The Slippers of Cinderella
_For you must have all heard of the Princess Cinderella with her
slim feet and shining slippers. She was beloved by Prince ----,
who married her, but she died soon afterwards, poisoned
(according to Dr. Gerschovius) by her elder sister Arabella, with
powdered glass. It was ground I suspect from those very slippers
she danced in at the famous ball. For the slippers of Cinderella
have never been found since. They are not at Cluny._
_HECTOR SANDUS_
VI. Portrait of Madame Réjane
[Illustration: First Comedy-Ballet]
[Illustration: Second Comedy Ballet]
[Illustration: Third Comedy Ballet]
[Illustration: Garçons de Café]
[Illustration: The Slippers of Cinderella]
[Illustration: Portrait of Madame Réjane]
Thirty Bob a Week
By John Davidson
I couldn't touch a stop and turn a screw,
And set the blooming world a-work for me,
Like such as cut their teeth--I hope, like you--
On the handle of a skeleton gold key.
I cut mine on leek, which I eat it every week:
I'm a clerk at thirty bob, as you can see.
But I don't allow it's luck and all a toss;
There's no such thing as being starred and crossed;
It's just the power of some to be a boss,
And the bally power of others to be bossed:
I face the music, sir; you bet I ain't a cur!
Strike me lucky if I don't believe I'm lost!
For like a mole I journey in the dark,
A-travelling along the underground
From my Pillar'd Halls and broad suburban Park
To come the daily dull official round;
And home again at night with my pipe all alight
A-scheming how to count ten bob a pound.
And it's often very cold and very wet;
And my missis stitches towels for a hunks;
And the Pillar'd Halls is half of it to let--
Three rooms about the size of travelling trunks.
And we cough, the wife and I, to dislocate a sigh,
When the noisy little kids are in their bunks.
But you'll never hear _her_ do a growl, or whine,
For she's made of flint and roses very odd;
And I've got to cut my meaning rather fine
Or I'd blubber, for _I'm_ made of greens and sod:
So p'rhaps we are in hell for all that I can tell,
And lost and damned and served up hot to God.
I ain't blaspheming, Mr. Silvertongue;
I'm saying things a bit beyond your art:
Of all the rummy starts you ever sprung
Thirty bob a week's the rummiest start!
With your science and your books and your the'ries about spooks,
Did you ever hear of looking in your heart?
I didn't mean your pocket, Mr.; no!
I mean that having children and a wife
With thirty bob on which to come and go
Isn't dancing to the tabor and the fife;
When it doesn't make you drink, by Heaven, it makes you think,
And notice curious items about life!
I step into my heart and there I meet
A god-almighty devil singing small,
Who would like to shout and whistle in the street,
And squelch the passers flat against the wall;
If the whole world was a cake he had the power to take,
He would take it, ask for more, and eat it all.
And I meet a sort of simpleton beside--
The kind that life is always giving beans;
With thirty bob a week to keep a bride
He fell in love and married in his teens;
At thirty bob he stuck, but he knows it isn't luck;
He knows the seas are deeper than tureens.
And the god-almighty devil and the fool
That meet me in the High Street on the strike,
When I walk about my heart a-gathering wool,
Are my good and evil angels if you like;
And both of them together in every kind of weather
Ride me like a double-seated "bike."
That's rough a bit and needs its meaning curled;
But I have a high old hot un in my mind,
A most engrugious notion of the world
That leaves your lightning 'rithmetic behind:
I give it at a glance when I say "There ain't no chance,
Nor nothing of the lucky-lottery kind."
And it's this way that I make it out to be:
No fathers, mothers, countries, climates--none!--
Not Adam was responsible for me;
Nor society, nor systems, nary one!
A little sleeping seed, I woke--I did indeed--
A million years before the blooming sun.
I woke because I thought the time had come;
Beyond my will there was no other cause:
And everywhere I found myself at home
Because I chose to be the thing I was;
And in whatever shape, of mollusc, or of ape,
I always went according to the laws.
_I_ was the love that chose my mother out;
_I_ joined two lives and from the union burst;
My weakness and my strength without a doubt
Are mine alone for ever from the first.
It's just the very same with a difference in the name
As "Thy will be done." You say it if you durst!
They say it daily up and down the land
As easy as you take a drink, it's true;
But the difficultest go to understand,
And the difficultest job a man can do,
Is to come it brave and meek with thirty bob a week,
And feel that that's the proper thing for you.
It's a naked child against a hungry wolf;
It's playing bowls upon a splitting wreck;
It's walking on a string across a gulf
With millstones fore-and-aft about your neck:
But the thing is daily done by many and many a one....
And we fall, face forward, fighting, on the deck.
A Responsibility
By Henry Harland
It has been an episode like a German sentence, with its predicate at
the end. Trifling incidents occurred at haphazard, as it seemed, and I
never guessed they were by way of making sense. Then, this morning,
somewhat of the suddenest, came the verb and the full stop.
Yesterday I should have said there was nothing to tell; to-day there
is too much. The announcement of his death has caused me to review our
relations, with the result of discovering my own part to have been
that of an accessory before the fact. I did not kill him (though, even
there, I'm not sure I didn't lend a hand), but I might have saved his
life. It is certain that he made me signals of distress--faint, shy,
tentative, but unmistakable--and that I pretended not to understand:
just barely dipped my colours, and kept my course. Oh, if I had
dreamed that his distress was extreme--that he was on the point of
foundering and going down! However, that doesn't exonerate me: I ought
to have turned aside to find out. It was a case of criminal
negligence. That he, poor man, probably never blamed me, only adds to
the burden on my conscience. He had got past blaming people, I dare
say, and doubtless merely lumped me with the rest--with the sum-total
of things that made life unsupportable. Yet, for a moment, when we
first met, his face showed a distinct glimmering of hope; so perhaps
there was a distinct disappointment. He must have had so many
disappointments, before it came to--what it came to; but it wouldn't
have come to that if he had got hardened to them. Possibly they had
lost their outlines, and merged into one dull general disappointment
that was too hard to bear. I wonder whether the Priest and the Levite
were smitten with remorse after they had passed on. Unfortunately, in
this instance, no Good Samaritan followed.
The bottom of our long _table d'hôte_ was held by a Frenchman, a
Normand, a giant, but a pallid and rather flabby giant, whose name, if
he had another than Monsieur, I never heard. He professed to be a
painter, used to sketch birds and profiles on the back of his
menu-card between the courses, wore shamelessly the multi-coloured
rosette of a foreign order in his buttonhole, and talked with a good
deal of physiognomy. I had the corner seat at his right, and was
flanked in turn by Miss Etta J. Hicks, a bouncing young person from
Chicago, beyond whom, like rabbits in a company of foxes, cowered Mr.
and Mrs. Jordan P. Hicks, two broken-spirited American parents. At
Monsieur's left, and facing me, sat Colonel Escott, very red and
cheerful; then a young man who called the Colonel Cornel, and came
from Dublin, proclaiming himself a barr'ster, and giving his name as
Flarty, though on his card it was written Flaherty; and then Sir
Richard Maistre. After him, a diminishing perspective of busy
diners--for purposes of conversation, so far as we were concerned,
inhabitants of the Fourth Dimension.
Of our immediate constellation Sir Richard Maistre was the only member
on whom the eye was tempted to linger. The others were obvious--simple
equations, soluble "in the head." But he called for slate and pencil,
offered materials for doubt and speculation, though it would not have
been easy to tell wherein they lay. What displayed itself to a cursory
inspection was quite unremarkable: simply a decent-looking young
Englishman, of medium stature, with square-cut plain features,
reddish-brown hair, grey eyes, and clothes and manners of the usual
pattern. Yet, showing through this ordinary surface, there was
something cryptic. For me, at any rate, it required a constant effort
not to stare at him. I felt it from the beginning, and I felt it till
the end: a teasing curiosity, a sort of magnetism that drew my eyes in
his direction. I was always on my guard to resist it, and that was
really the inception of my neglect of him. From I don't know what
stupid motive of pride, I was anxious that he shouldn't discern the
interest he had excited in me; so I paid less ostensible attention to
him than to the others, who excited none at all. I tried to appear
unconscious of him as a detached personality, to treat him as merely a
part of the group as a whole. Then I improved such occasions as
presented themselves to steal glances at him, to study him _à la
dérobée_--groping after the quality, whatever it was, that made him a
puzzle--seeking to formulate, to classify him.
Already, at the end of my first dinner, he had singled himself out and
left an impression. I went into the smoking-room, and began to wonder,
over a cup of coffee and a cigarette, who he was. I had not heard his
voice; he hadn't talked much, and his few observations had been
murmured into the ears of his next neighbours. All the same, he had
left an impression, and I found myself wondering who he was, the young
man with the square-cut features and the reddish-brown hair. I have
said that his features were square-cut and plain, but they were small
and carefully finished, and as far as possible from being common. And
his grey eyes, though not conspicuous for size or beauty, had a
character, an expression. They _said_ something, something I couldn't
perfectly translate, something shrewd, humorous, even perhaps a little
caustic, and yet sad; not violently, not rebelliously sad (I should
never have dreamed that it was a sadness which would drive him to
desperate remedies), but rather resignedly, submissively sad, as if he
had made up his mind to put the best face on a sorry business. This
was carried out by a certain abruptness, a slight lack of suavity, in
his movements, in his manner of turning his head, of using his hands.
It hinted a degree of determination which, in the circumstances,
seemed superfluous. He had unfolded his napkin and attacked his dinner
with an air of resolution, like a man with a task before him, who
mutters, "Well, it's got to be done, and I'll do it." At a hazard, he
was two- or three-and-thirty, but below his neck he looked older. He
was dressed like everybody, but his costume had, somehow, an effect of
soberness beyond his years. It was decidedly not smart, and smartness
was the dominant note at the Hôtel d'Angleterre.
I was still more or less vaguely ruminating him, in a corner of the
smoking-room, on that first evening, when I became aware that he was
standing near me. As I looked up, our eyes met, and for the fraction
of a second fixed each other. It was barely the fraction of a second,
but it was time enough for the transmission of a message. I knew as
certainly as if he had said so that he wanted to speak, to break the
ice, to scrape an acquaintance; I knew that he had approached me and
was loitering in my neighbourhood for that specific purpose. I _don't_
know, I have studied the psychology of the moment in vain to
understand, why I felt a perverse impulse to put him off. I was
interested in him, I was curious about him; and there he stood,
testifying that the interest was reciprocal, ready to make the
advances, only waiting for a glance or a motion of encouragement; and
I deliberately secluded myself behind my coffee-cup and my cigarette
smoke. I suppose it was the working of some obscure mannish vanity--of
what in a woman would have defined itself as coyness and coquetry. If
he wanted to speak--well, let him speak; I wouldn't help him. I could
realise the processes of _his_ mind even more clearly than those of my
own--his desire, his hesitancy. He was too timid to leap the barriers;
I must open a gate for him. He hovered near me for a minute longer,
and then drifted away. I felt his disappointment, his spiritual shrug
of the shoulders; and I perceived rather suddenly that I was
disappointed myself. I must have been hoping all along that he would
speak _quand même_, and now I was moved to run after him, to call him
back. That, however, would imply a consciousness of guilt, an
admission that my attitude had been intentional; so I kept my seat,
making a mental rendezvous with him for the morrow.
Between my Irish _vis-à-vis_ Flaherty and myself there existed no such
strain. He presently sauntered up to me, and dropped into conversation
as easily as if we had been old friends.
"Well, and are you here for your health or your entertainment?" he
began. "But I don't need to ask that of a man who's drinking black
coffee and smoking tobacco at this hour of the night. I'm the only
invalid at our end of the table, and I'm no better than an amateur
meself. It's a barrister's throat I have--I caught it waiting for
briefs in me chambers at Doblin."
We chatted together for a half-hour or so, and before we parted he had
given me a good deal of general information--about the town, the
natives, the visitors, the sands, the golf-links, the hunting, and,
with the rest, about our neighbours at table.
"Did ye notice the pink-faced bald little man at me right? That's
Cornel Escott, C.B., retired. He takes a sea-bath every morning, to
live up to the letters; and faith, it's an act of heroism, no less, in
weather the like of this. Three weeks have I been here, and but wan
day of sunshine, and the mercury never above fifty. The other fellow,
him at me left, is what you'd be slow to suspect by the look of him,
I'll go bail; and that's a bar'net, Sir Richard Maistre, with a place
in Hampshire, and ten thousand a year if he's a penny. The young lady
beside yourself rejoices in the euphonious name of Hicks, and trains
her Popper and Mommer behind her like slaves in a Roman triumph.
They're Americans, if you must have the truth, though I oughtn't to
tell it on them, for I'm an Irishman myself, and its not for the pot
to be bearing tales of the kettle. However, their tongues bewray them;
so I've violated no confidence."