Latin verses. To write good ones was a certain means of getting into his
good books. Some schoolboy trick had been played on him one day, and as
the delinquent would not confess, nor any other boy tell of him,
Monsieur Roberge stopped the whole class's leave. As the Easter
vacation, which meant four or five days' holiday, was at hand, this was
a terrible punishment indeed. Nevertheless, schoolboy honour stood firm,
and the name of the culprit was not divulged.
The idea struck me that if I were to attack Monsieur Roberge on his weak
point, he might relent.
Without a word to my comrades, I wrote a copy of Latin verses, taking
for my theme the sufferings of the caged bird, far from the country and
the woods, cut off from the bright sun and the free air, and plaintively
crying out for liberty. Good luck attended me--I suppose because my
object was so meritorious!
When we got back into school, I seized an opportunity, when Monsieur
Roberge's back was turned, to lay my little effusion on his desk. On
taking his seat he saw the paper, opened it, and began to read.
"Gentlemen," he said, "who wrote these lines?"
I held up my hand.
"They are extremely good," said he. Then, after a moment, "I cancel the
punishment inflicted on this class; you can thank your comrade Gounod
for earning your liberty by his good work."
Unnecessary to describe the civic honours showered on me in return.
At length I got into the second class, and found myself once again under
my beloved former master, Adolphe Regnier, who had taught me while I was
in the sixth.
Among my new comrades were Eugene Despois, afterwards a brilliant pupil
at the Ecole Normale, and a well-known classic, Octave Ducros de Sixt,
and Albert Delacourtie, the high-minded and clever lawyer, still one of
my closest and most faithful friends. We four practically monopolised
the top places, the "Banc d'Honneur."
At Easter I was considered sufficiently advanced to warrant my being
transferred to the Rhetoric class;[2] but I only remained in it three
months, as my studies had been sufficiently satisfactory for my mother
finally to abandon her idea of extra classes.
I left the Lycee at the summer vacation, being then a little over
seventeen.
Still I had not passed through the Philosophy class, and my mother had
no intention of allowing me to leave my education incomplete. It was
therefore agreed and arranged that I was to go on working at home, and,
without interrupting my musical studies, to read for my Bachelor of Arts
degree, which I succeeded in taking within the year.
I have often regretted that I did not take a science degree as well. I
should thus have made acquaintance at an early age with many ideas whose
importance I only realised later in life, and my ignorance of which I
much regret. But time was running short. I had to set to work if I was
to win the Grand Prix de Rome, as I had promised; it was a matter of
life or death for my career. So there was not a moment to be lost.
Reicha being just dead, I was bereft of my instructor. The idea of
taking me to Cherubini, and asking him to put me into one of the
composition classes at the Conservatoire, struck my mother. I took some
of my exercise books under my arm, to give Cherubini some notion of what
Reicha had taught me. But he did not think fit to look at them. He
questioned me closely about my past, and as soon as he knew I had been a
pupil of Reicha's (although the latter had been a colleague of his at
the Conservatoire), he said to my mother--
"Very well; now he must begin all over again. I don't approve of
Reicha's style. He was a German, and this boy ought to follow the
Italian method. I shall put him under my pupil Halevy, to work at
counterpoint and fugue."
Cherubini's view was that the Italian school followed the only orthodox
system of music, as laid down by Palestrina, whereas the Germans look
upon Sebastian Bach as the high priest of harmony.
Far from being discouraged by this decision, I was only too delighted.
"All the better," said I to myself; and to my mother, later on, "It will
be great advantage to me. I can choose the best points of both the great
schools. It is all for the best."
I joined Halevy's class, and at the same time Cherubini put me into the
hands of Berton, the author of "Montano and Stephanie," and a varied
collection of other works of high value, who was to instruct me in
lyrical composition.
Berton was a man of quick wit, kindly and refined. He was a great
admirer of Mozart, whose works he constantly recommended to the
attention of his old pupils.
"Study Mozart," he was always saying; "study the 'Nozze de Figaro!'"
He was quite right. That work should be every musician's text-book.
Mozart bears the same relation to Palestrina and Bach as the New
Testament bears to the Old, in Holy Writ.
When Berton died, as he did a couple of months after I joined his class,
Cherubini handed me over to Le Sueur, the composer of "Les Bardes," "La
Caverne," and of many masses and oratorios.
He was a man of grave and reserved character, but fervent and almost
biblical in inspiration, and devoted to sacred subjects. He looked like
an old patriarch, with his tall figure and waxen complexion.
Le Sueur received me with the greatest kindness, almost amounting to
paternal tenderness; he was very affectionate and warm-hearted. I was
only under him, I regret to say, for nine or ten months; but the period,
short as it was, was of incalculable benefit to me. The wise and
high-minded counsels he bestowed on me entitle him to an honoured place
in my memory and my grateful affection.
Under Halevy's guidance I re-learned the whole theory and practice of
counterpoint and fugue; but although I worked hard, and gained my
master's approval, I never won a prize at the Conservatoire. My one and
constant aim was that Grand Prix de Rome, which I had sworn to win at
any cost.
I was nearly nineteen when I first competed for it. I got the second
prize.
On the death of Le Sueur I continued to study under Paer, his successor
as Professor of Composition.
I tried again the following year. My poor mother was torn between hope
and fear. This time it must be either the Grand Prix or nothing! Alas!
it was the latter; and I was just twenty, the age when my military
service was due.
However, the fact of my having won the second prize the year before
entitled me to twelve months' grace, and gave me the chance of making a
third and last effort.
To make up for my disappointment, my mother took me for a month's tour
in Switzerland. She was as bright and active then, at eight-and-fifty,
as any other woman of thirty. As I had never been outside Paris, except
to Versailles, Rouen, and Havre, this tour was a dream of delight to me.
Geneva, Chamounix, the Oberland, the Righi, the Lakes, the journey home
by Bale, successively claimed my admiration. We went through the whole
of Switzerland on mule-back, rising early, going late to rest; and my
mother was always up and ready dressed before she roused me.
I returned to Paris full of fresh zeal for my work, and quite determined
this time to carry off the Grand Prix de Rome.
At last the period of competition came round. I entered, and I won the
prize.
My poor mother wept for joy, first of all, but afterwards at the
thought that the first result of my triumph would be to separate us for
three weary years, two of which I should have to spend in Rome and one
in Germany. We had never been parted before, and now her daily life was
going to be like the story of the "Two Pigeons."
The winners of the other Grand Prizes of my year were Hebert for
painting, Gruyere for sculpture, Lefuel for architecture, and Vauthier
(grandson of Galle) for medal engraving.
Towards the end of October the different prizes were publicly awarded
with becoming solemnity. This ceremony was an annual function, one of
its features being the performance of the cantata which had won the
music prize. My brother, who was an architect, had highly distinguished
himself at the Ecole des Beaux Arts under the teaching of Huyot. Whether
it was that he foresaw his younger brother would one day win a Grand
Prix, and consequently have to go abroad to study, I know not, but
Urbain utterly refused to compete for a similar honour himself. He did
not choose to leave a mother he adored, and of whom he was the prop and
support for five long years. But he did carry off a prize known as the
Departmental Prize, conferred on the student who has won the greatest
number of medals during his attendance at the Ecole des Beaux Arts.
The winner of this prize was publicly named at a general sitting of the
Institute, and my proud mother had the satisfaction of seeing both her
sons honoured in the same day.
I have already mentioned that my brother was educated at the Versailles
Lycee. There he became acquainted with Lefuel, whose father was
architect at the Palace, and who was to live to add lustre to the name
he bore. They met again as fellow-pupils in the office of Huyot, one of
the architects of the Arc de Triomphe, and there became, and always
continued, the firmest of friends. Lefuel was nearly nine years older
than I. My mother, who loved him like her own son, urgently begged him
to look after me; and, in duty to the memory of my good old friend, I
chronicle the faithful care and watchfulness with which he performed his
trust.
* * * * *
Before I started abroad I was offered a piece of work, considerable
enough at any age, but doubly so at mine. Dietsch, the chapel-master of
St. Eustache, who at that time was chorus-master at the Opera, said to
me one day--
"Why don't you write a mass before going to Rome? If you will compose
one, I will have it sung at St. Eustache."
A mass! of my composition! and at St. Eustache! I thought I must be
dreaming!
I had five months before me, so I set to work at once. Thanks to my
mother's industrious help in copying the orchestral parts (we were too
poor to afford a copyist), all was ready on the appointed day. A mass
with full orchestra--think of that!
I dedicated this work--over-boldly perhaps, but certainly with deep
gratitude--to the memory of my beloved and regretted master, Le Sueur,
and I myself conducted the performance at St. Eustache.
My mass, I readily admit, was a work of no very remarkable value. The
novice's inexperience in the art of handling an orchestra with all its
varied tints of sound, which needs so long a practical experience, was
all too apparent. As to the musical ideas my work contained, their value
was confined to a fairly clear conception of the sense of its sacred
subject, and a tolerably close harmony between that sense and the music
intended to illustrate it. But vigour of design and general outline were
sorely lacking.
However that may have been, this first attempt brought me much kind
encouragement; the following, for instance, which touched me specially.
Returning home with my mother after the performance of the mass, I found
a messenger with a note awaiting me at the door of our apartment (then
at 8 Rue de l'Eperon, on the ground floor). I opened the letter, and
read as follows:--
"Well done, young fellow, whom I remember as a child! All honour to your
'Gloria,' your 'Credo,' and, above all, your 'Sanctus.' It is fine, it
is full of religious feeling! Well done, and many thanks! You have made
me very happy!"
It was from good Monsieur Poirson, my former Principal at Saint Louis,
then Principal of the Lycee Charlemagne. He had seen the announcement of
my mass, and had come with all speed to witness the first public
appearance of the young artist to whom he had said, seven years before,
"Go on, my boy; you _shall_ be a musician!"
I was so touched by his kindly thought, that I did not even wait to go
indoors. I rushed into the street, called a cab, and hurried to the
Lycee Charlemagne, in the Rue St. Antoine, where I found my dear old
Principal, who clasped me to his heart.
I had only four more days to spend with my mother before leaving her for
three years. She, poor woman, through her constant tears, was getting
everything ready against the day of my departure. Very soon it came.
II
_ITALY_
We left Paris, Lefuel and Vauthier and I, on December 5th, 1839, by the
mail-coach which started from the Rue Jean Jacques Rousseau.
My brother was the only person there to bid us farewell. Our first stage
took us to Lyons. Thence we followed the course of the Rhone, by
Avignon, Arles, &c., till we reached Marseilles.
At Marseilles we took a "vetturino."
"Vetturino!" What memories the word recalls! Alas for the poor old
travelling carriage long since shouldered out of existence, crushed and
smothered under the hurrying feet of the iron horse!
The good-natured old conveyance which one stopped at will, whenever one
wanted peacefully to admire those beautiful bits of scenery through or
mayhap underneath which the snorting steam horse, devouring space like
any meteor, now whisks you like a parcel! In those days men travelled
gradually, insensibly from one impression to another; now this railway
mortar fires us from Paris, in our sleep, to wake under some Eastern
sky. No imperceptible mental transition or climatic change! We are shot
out roughly, treated as a British merchant treats his merchandise. Close
packed like bales down in a hold, and delivered with all speed, like
fish sent on by express train to make sure of its arriving fresh! If
only progress, that remorseless conqueror, would even spare its victims'
lives! But no, the vetturino has departed utterly. Yet I bless his
memory. But for his aid, I should have never had the joy of seeing that
wonderful Corniche, the ideal introduction to the delicious climate and
the picturesque charms of Italy--Monaco, Mentone, Sestri, Genoa,
Spezzia, Trasimeno, Tuscany, Pisa, Lucca, Sienna, Perugia, Florence. A
progressive and many-sided education, Nature's explanation of the
existence of the great masters, while they in turn teach man to look at
Nature. For close on two happy months we dallied over all this
loveliness, leisurely tasting and enjoying it, till finally, on January
27th, 1840, we entered the great city which was to be our home, our
teacher, our initiator into the noblest and severest beauties of nature
and of art.
The Director of the French Academy at that time was Monsieur Ingres. He
had been one of my father's early friends. On our arrival, we called, as
in duty bound, to pay him our respects. As soon as he saw me he cried--
"You are Gounod, I am sure! Goodness! how like your father you are!"
He spoke of my father's talent as a draughtsman, of his kind
disposition, of his brilliant wit and conversational powers, with an
admiration which, coming as it did from the lips of so distinguished an
artist, constituted the most delightful welcome I could have had. Soon
we were established in our different quarters, consisting in each case
of a single large apartment, called a _Loggia_, which served alike as
bedroom and as studio.
My first thought was of the length of time which must elapse before I
saw my mother again. I wondered whether my work as an art student would
suffice to enable me to bear with any sort of patience a separation
which, between Rome and Germany, must cover quite three years.
Gazing from my window on the dome of St. Peter's in the distance, I
readily yielded to the melancholy aroused by my first taste of
solitude--though solitude is hardly a word applicable to this palace,
where twenty-two of us dwelt, and where we all met at least twice daily
at the common board, in that splendid dining-hall, the walls of which
are covered with the portraits of every student since the foundation of
the Academy. Besides, it was my nature to make friends quickly, and live
on excellent terms with those about me.
I must admit, too, that my low spirits were in great part due to my
first impressions of Rome itself. I was utterly disappointed. Instead of
the city of my dreams, majestic and imposing, full of ancient temples,
antique monuments, and picturesque ruins, I saw a mere provincial town,
vulgar, characterless, and, in most places, very dirty.
My disenchantment was complete, and it would have required but little
persuasion to make me throw up the sponge, pack my traps, and hurry back
to Paris and all I cared for as quickly as wheels could take me there.
As a matter of fact, Rome does possess all the beauties I had dreamt
of, but the eye of a new-comer cannot at first perceive them. They must
be sought out, felt for, here and there, until by slow degrees the
sleeping glories of the splendid past awake, and the dumb ruins and dry
bones arise once more to life before their patient student's eyes.
I was still too young, not only in years, but also and especially in
character, to grasp or understand at the first glance the deep
significance of the solemn, austere city, whose whisper is so low that
only ears accustomed to deep silence and sharpened by seclusion can
catch its tones. Rome is the echo of the Scriptural words of the Maker
of the human soul to His own handiwork: "I will bring her into the
wilderness, and speak comfortably to her." So various is she in herself,
and in such deep calm is everything about her lapped, that no conception
of her immense _ensemble_ and prodigious wealth of treasures is possible
at first. The Past, the Present, and the Future alike crown her the
capital not of Italy only, but of the human race in general. This fact
is recognised by all who have lived there long; for whatever the country
whence the wanderer comes, whatever tongue he speaks, Rome has a
universal language understood by all, so that the thoughtful traveller,
leaving her, feels he leaves home behind him.
Little by little I felt my low spirits evaporate and a new feeling take
their place. I began to know Rome better, and cast aside the
winding-sheet which had enwrapped me, as it were. But even up to this I
had not been living in downright idleness.
My favourite amusement was reading Goethe's "Faust," in French of
course, as I knew no German. I read too, with great interest,
"Lamartine's Poems." Before I began to think about sending home my first
batch of work, for which I still had plenty of time before me, I busied
myself in composing a number of melodies, among others "Le Vallon" and
also "Le Soir," the music of which I incorporated ten years afterwards
into a scene in the first act of my opera "Sappho," to the beautiful
lines written by my dear friend and famous colleague, Emile Augier,
"Hero sur la tour solitaire."
I wrote both these songs at a few days' interval, almost as soon as I
arrived at the Villa Medecis.
Six weeks or so slipped away. My eyes had grown accustomed to the
silent city, which at first had seemed so like a desert to me. The very
silence ended by having its own charm, by becoming an actual pleasure to
me; and I took particular delight in roaming about the Forum, the ruins
of the Palatine Hill, and the Coliseum, those glorious relics of a power
and splendour departed, which have rested now for centuries under the
august and peaceful rule of the universal Shepherd, and the Empress city
of the world.
A very worthy and pleasant family of the name of Desgoffe was at that
time staying with Monsieur and Madame Ingres. I had made their
acquaintance, and gradually became very intimate with them. Alexandre
Desgoffe was not an Academy student like myself, but a private pupil of
Monsieur Ingres, and a very fine landscape painter. Yet he lived in the
Academy buildings with his wife and daughter, a charming child of nine,
who afterwards became Madame Paul Flandrin, and retained as a wife and
mother the sweetness which characterised her girlhood. Desgoffe himself
was a man in ten thousand; downright and honest, modest and unselfish,
simple and pure-minded as a child, the kindest and most faithful soul
on earth. It may easily be guessed that my mother was very glad to learn
that I had such good people near me to show me true affection, and not
only comfort my loneliness, but, if necessary, give me kind and devoted
care.
We students always spent our Sunday evenings in the Director's
drawing-room, to which we had the right of _entree_ on that day.
Generally there was music. Monsieur Ingres had taken a fancy to me, and
he was music mad. He particularly affected Haydn, Mozart, Beethoven, and
above all Gluck, whose noble style, with its touch of pathos, stamped
him in his mind as something of the ancient Greek, a worthy scion of
AEschylus, of Sophocles, or Euripides.
Monsieur Ingres played the violin. He was no finished performer, still
less was he an artist; but in his youth he had played in the orchestra
of his native town, Montauban, and taken part in the performance of
Gluck's operas.
I had read and studied the German composer's works. As to Mozart's "Don
Giovanni," I knew it all by heart; so, although not a very good pianist,
I was quite up to treating Monsieur Ingres to recollections of his
favourite score.
Beethoven's symphonies I knew by heart, too, and these he passionately
admired; we often spent the greater part of the night deep in talk over
the great master's works, and before long I stood high in his good
graces.
Nobody who was not intimately acquainted with Monsieur Ingres can have
any correct idea of what he really was. I lived in close familiarity
with him for some considerable time, and I can testify to the
simplicity, uprightness, and frankness of his nature. He was full of
candour and of noble impulse, enthusiastic, even eloquent at times. He
could be as tender and gentle as a child, and then again he would pour
out a torrent of apostolic wrath. His unaffectedness and sensitive
delicacy were touching, and there was a freshness of feeling about the
man which has never yet been found in any _poseur_, as some people have
elected to call him.
Humble and modest in the presence of a master-mind, he stood up proudly
and boldly against foolish arrogance and self-sufficiency. He was
fatherly in his treatment of his students, whom he looked on as his
children, giving each his appointed rank with jealous care, whatever
that of the visitors in his drawing-room might be. Such were the
characteristics of the excellent noble-minded artist, whose invaluable
tuition I was about to have the good fortune of receiving.
I was deeply attached to him, and I shall always remember his dropping
in my hearing one or two of those luminous sentences which, when
properly understood, cast so much light upon the artistic life. Every
one knows that famous saying of his, "Drawing is the honesty of art." He
said another thing before me once, which is a perfect volume in itself,
"There is no grace where there is no strength." True, indeed! for grace
and strength are the two complementary constituents of perfect beauty.
Strength saves grace from degenerating into mere wanton charm, while
grace purifies strength from all its coarseness and brutality--the
perfect harmony of the two thus marking the highest level art can reach,
and giving it the stamp of genius.
It has been said and frequently repeated, parrot-wise, that Monsieur
Ingres was intolerant and exclusive. That is utterly untrue. If he had a
way of imposing his opinions, it was because of his intense belief--the
surest means of influencing others. I never knew any one with such a
power of universal admiration, simply because he knew better than most
what to admire, and wherein beauty lay. But he was discreet. He knew
full well how prone youthful enthusiasm is to fall down and worship
unreasoningly before the personal peculiarities of an artist or
composer. He knew these same peculiarities--which are, as it were, the
individual characteristics and facial features whereby we recognise
them, as we recognise each other--are, for that very reason, the most
incommunicable qualities about them, and thence he deduced the fact,
first, that any imitation of them amounts to plagiarism, and, further,
that such imitation must infallibly end in exaggeration, degenerating
into absolute artistic vice.
This explanation of Monsieur Ingres's real character will partially
account for the unjust accusation of intolerance and exclusiveness
levelled against him.
The following anecdote proves how loyally he could abandon a hastily
formed opinion, and how little obstinacy there was about any dislike he
might chance to take.