MY FIRST MUSICAL ADVENTURE
Music-mad, I arrived in Paris during the last weeks of the World's
Fair of 1878, impelled there by a parching desire to see Franz
Liszt, if not to hear him. He was then honorary director of the
Austro-Hungarian section. But I could not find him, although I heard
of him everywhere, of musical fetes and the usual glittering company
that had always surrounded this extraordinary son of fortune. One
day I fancied I saw him. I was sadly walking the Rue de Rivoli of an
October afternoon, when in a passing carriage I saw an old chap with
bushy white hair, his face full of expressive warts, and in his
mouth a long black cigar, which he was furiously puffing. Liszt! I
gasped, and started in pursuit. It was not an easy job to keep up
with the carriage. At last, because of a blocked procession, I
caught up and took a long stare, the object of which composedly
smiled at me, but did not truly convince me that he was Franz Liszt.
You see there were so many different pictures of him; even the warts
were not always the same in number. When I am in the Cambyses vein I
swear I've seen Liszt. Perhaps I did.
Liszt or no Liszt, my ambition was fired, and at the advice of
Frederick Boscovitz, a pupil of Liszt and cousin of Rafael Joseffy,
I went to the Conservatoire Nationale, with a letter of introduction
to the acting secretary, Emile Rety. I was told that I was too old
to enter, being a few months past eighteen. I was disappointed and
voiced my woes to Lucy Hamilton Hooper, then a clever writer and
correspondent of several American newspapers. Her husband was
Vice-Consul Robert Hooper and he kindly introduced me to General
Fairchild, the consul, and after a cross-examination I was given
a letter in which the United States Government testified to my good
social standing (I was not a bandit, nor yet an absconder from
justice) and extreme youth. Armed with this formidable document,
I again besieged the gates of the great French conservatoire--whose
tuition, it must be remembered, is free. I was successful, inasmuch
as I was permitted to present myself at the yearly examination, which
took place November 13 (ominous date). To say that I studied hard and
shook in my boots is a literal statement. I lived at the time in an
alley-like street off the Boulevard des Batignolles and lived
luxuriously on five dollars a week, eating one satisfying meal a day
(with a hot bowl of coffee in the morning) and practising on a
wretched little cottage piano as long as my neighbours would stand
the noise. They chucked boots or any old faggot they could find at
my door, and after twelve hours I was so tired of patrolling the
keyboard that I was glad to stop. Then, a pillow on my stomach to
keep down the pangs of a youthfully gorgeous appetite, I would lie
in bed till dinner-time. O Chopin! O consomme and boiled beef! O
sour blue wine at six cents the litre!
At last the fatal day dawned, as the novelists say. It was nasty,
chilling, foggy autumnal, but my long locks hung negligently and my
velveteen coat was worn defiantly open to the wind. I reached the
Conservatoire--then in the old building on the Rue du Faubourg
Poissoniere--at precisely nine o'clock of the morn. I was put in a
large room with an indiscriminate lot of candidates, some of them so
young as to be fit for the care of a nurse. Like lost sheep we
huddled and as my eyes feverishly rambled I noticed a lad of about
twelve with curling hair worn artist fashion; a naughty haughty boy
he was, for he sneered at my lengthy legs and audibly inquired: "Is
grandpa to play with us!" I knew enough French to hate that little
monster with a nervous hatred. There was a tightened feeling about
my throat and heart and I waited in an agitated spirit for my
number. A bearded and shy young man came in from examination and was
at once mocked by the incipient virtuoso in pantalettes. Another
unfortunate, with a roll of music! Then the little devil was
summoned. We sat up. In ten minutes he returned with downcast mien,
flushed face, tears in his eyes, and tried to sneak out of the
room, but too late. After shaking hands all round we solemnly danced
in a circle about the now sobbing and no longer sinister child. Who
says youth is ever generous?
"Number thirteen!" sang out a voice, and I was pushed through a
narrow entry and a minute later was standing on the historic stage
of the Paris Conservatoire. The lighting was dim, but I discerned a
group of persons somewhere in front of me. A man asked me to sit
down at the grand piano--of course, like most pianos, out of
tune--and I tremblingly obeyed his polite request. At this juncture
a woman's voice inquired: "How old are you, monsieur?" I told her. A
feminine laugh rippled through the gloom, for I wore a fluffy little
beard, was undeniably gawky, and looked conspicuously older than my
years. That laugh settled me. Queer, creepy feelings seized my legs,
my eyes were full of solar spectrums, my throat a furnace and my
heart beat like a triphammer. I was not the first man, young or old,
to be knocked out by a woman's laugh. (Later I met the lady. She was
Madame Massart, and the wife of the well-known violin master,
Massart, of the Conservatoire.) Again the demand, "Play something."
It was a foregone conclusion that I couldn't. I began a minuetto
from a Beethoven Sonata, hesitated, saw fiery snakes and a
kaleidoscope of comets, then pitched into a presto by the
unfortunate Beethoven, and was soon stopped. A sheet of manuscript
was placed before me. I could have sworn that it was upside down, so
as a sight-reading test it was a failure. I was altogether a
distinguished failure, and with the audible comment of the examining
faculty ringing in my ears, I stumbled across the stage into welcome
darkness, and without waiting to thank Secretary Rety for his
amiability I got away, crossing in a hurry that celebrated courtyard
in which the hideous noises made by many instruments, including the
human voice, reminded me of a torture circle in Dante's Inferno.
The United States had no reason to be proud of her musical--or
unmusical--son that dull day in November, 1878. When I arrived in my
garret I swore I was through and seriously thought of studying the
xylophone. But my mood of profound discouragement was succeeded by a
more hopeful one. If you can't enter the Paris Conservatoire as an
active student you may have influence enough to become an
"auditeur," a listener; and a listener I became and in the class of
Professor Georges Mathias, a genuine pupil of Chopin. My musical
readers will understand my good luck. From that spiritual master I
learned many things about the Polish composer; heard from his still
supple fingers much music as Chopin had interpreted it. Delicate and
discriminating in style, M. Mathias had never developed into a
brilliant concert pianist; sometimes he produced effects on the
keyboard that sounded like emotional porcelain falling from a high
shelf and melodiously shattering on velvet mirrors. He also taught
me that if a pianist or violinist or singer is too nervous before
the public, then he or she has not a musical vocation--the case of
Adolf Henselt to the contrary notwithstanding. But better would it
be for me to admit that I failed because I didn't will earnestly
enough to succeed.