But, to be fair, I must add in conclusion that she could be very friendly too, and playful in her way. It would be ungrateful of me not to record how she greeted me with "Bon soir, cher amour," one evening. But that was at Wieniawski's wedding, and I suppose the darts of Cupid were flying about.
As far as I could judge, she made that illustrious husband of hers an excellent wife; she knew what he liked, and she took care that he had it, whether it was a favourite dish or a favoured visitor; and, what was more, she knew whom to keep at a distance, a valuable quality in the wife of a man whom everymusician, good or bad, professional or amateur, wanted to know, and who was besieged by autograph-hunters, interviewers, and the host of nondescripts who are ever anxious to cling to the tail of Pegasus.
I have known more than one wife of that most useful genus, and have not always quite liked their methods; as when, on one occasion, I had run over to Paris, I called on an old friend, also a great composer. His better half, who always jealously guarded the approaches, espied me from the top of a high staircase. "Ah, c'est vous, Monsieur Félix," she cried with genuine delight. "Comme cela se trouve bien; justement j'ai un paquet à envoyer à Londres." I had a long and interesting chat with the master, in exchange for which I gladly took Madame's most undesirable parcel.
In the summer of 1860 my father made a short stay in Paris. He was most cordially welcomed by friends and colleagues, amongst these the Erards, Viardots, Crémieux, Auber, Ambroise Thomas, and Rossini. The Maestro was at that time staying at his villa in Passy. Referring to his first visit there, my father writes:—
"Felix had been made quite at home in the villa on former occasions. To me the Salon on the ground floor with its rich furniture was new, and, before the Maestro himself appeared, we looked at his photograph in a circular porcelain frame, on the sides of which were inscribed the names of his works. The ceiling is covered with pictures illustrating scenes in the lives of Palestrina and Mozart; in the middle of the room stands a Pleyel piano.
"When Rossini came in, he gave me the orthodox Italian kiss, and was effusive in expressing his delight at my reappearance, and very complimentary on the subject of Felix. In the course of our conversation he was full of hard-hitting truths and brilliant satire on the present study and method of vocalisation. 'I don't want to hear any more of their screaming,' he said; 'I want a resonant voice, full-toned, not screeching; I care not whether it be for speaking or singing, everything ought to sound melodious.'
"He then spoke of the pleasure he felt in studying the piano. 'And, if it were not presumption,' he added, 'in composing for that instrument. I find it hard, however, to make my fourth and fifth fingers do their duty properly.'
"Talking of the present style of playing, he said: 'How they maltreat the piano! Ils enfoncent non seulement le piano, mais encore le fauteuil et même le plancher!' (They smash not only the piano, but the chair and the very floor).
"Every instrument, he went on to say, should be treated according to its special character. Sor, the guitarist, and Vimercati proved the possibility of obtaining great artistic results with slender means. I happened to have heard both these artists, and could quite endorse his views. He told me that, arriving late one evening at a small Italian town, he had already retired to rest, when Vimercati, the resident Kapellmeister, sent him an invitation to be present at a performance of one of his operas. In those days he was not yet as hard-hearted as he isnow, when he once for all refuses to be present at the performance of any work of his; so he not only went to the theatre, but played the double-bass as a substitute for the right man, who was not forthcoming. This reminded me of what I once experienced to the cost of my nerves at York, when the part of the viola in Mozart's D Minor Symphony was missing, and the bassoon was flat. I showed Rossini on the piano what the effect was like, and he laughed heartily. Then he wanted a little serious music. I improvised, and he said, 'Cela est il gravé? C'est de la musique qui coule de source; il-y-a l'eau de réservoir et l'eau de source; l'une ne coule que quand vous tournez le robinet, elle sent la vase, l'autre, fraiche et limpide, coule toujours. Aujourd'hui on confond le simple et le trivial; un motif de Mozart on l'appellerait trivial si on osait!' (Has that been published? That is music which flows spontaneously. There is tank-water and spring-water; one runs only when you turn on the tap, and always savours of mud, the other ever flows fresh and clear. But nowadays people do not know the difference between the trivial and the simple; they would call a melody of Mozart's trivial if they dared.)
"He was delighted to hear that encouragement was given to the serious study of the organ at the Leipsic Conservatorio, and he regretted the decay of church music in Italy. On the subject of Marcello's and Palestrina's 'sublime creations' he was quite eloquent. When we parted he made me promise to call on him once more before the day fixed upon to dine with him. I was happy to do so, and, when Inext came, Rossini, yielding to my request, but not without modestly expressing diffidence in his own powers, played an Andante of his in B flat, beginning somewhat in this style:
musical notation
in which, after the first eight bars, the following interesting modulation is introduced:
musical notation
"The piece is what we Germans would call tame. He also showed me two manuscript compositions, an Introduction and Fugue in C major, and a sort of pastoral Fantasia with a brilliant Rondo in A major, which I had to play to him, and, when I added a missing♮to the MS., he declared it was 'worth gold' to him. Clara, who was with me, and had already mustered up sufficient courage to sing my 'Frühlingslied' and 'Botschaft' to Rossini's satisfaction, was obliged to repeat both songs before the singers, Ponchard and Levasseur, who had just come in. I accompanied, and, in answer to the Maestro's remark that I had enough flow of melody to write an opera, I said: 'What a pity that I am not young enough to become your pupil!' and when, referring to my playing from his manuscripts, he dubbed me 'King of Pianists,' I told him that whatever I was, I owed to the old school and the old master Clementi.At the mention of that name he went to the piano and played parts of his sonatas by heart.
"On another occasion he would have it there were barricades in my 'Humoristische Variationen,' so boldly did they seem to assail time-worn traditions; and as for the 'Grande Valse,' he found the title too unassuming. 'Surely,' he insisted, 'a waltz with some angelic creature must have inspired you, andthatthe title ought to express. Titles, in fact, should pique the curiosity of the public.' That is a view uncongenial to me; however, I did not discuss it."
At the dinner my father spoke of, the conversation turned on Meyerbeer and on macaroni. He seemed much attached to both, more though to the latter, I thought, and to other productions of the Italian chef, than to the chef-d'[oe]uvres of his Franco-German colleague. He would speak in very appreciative terms of Meyerbeer, but he did not seem displeased when disparaging remarks on the works of his rival were made.
One of the stories current concerning the two masters was this:—
Rossini was going along the Boulevards with a friend, when they met Meyerbeer, and exchanged cordial greetings.
"And how is your health, my dear Maestro?" asks Meyerbeer.
"Shaky, cher maître, very shaky. My digestion, you know, my poor head. Alas! I'm afraid I am going down hill."
They pass on. "How could you tell suchstories?" asks the friend; "you were never in better health, and you talk of going down hill."
"Ah, well," answered Rossini, "to be sure—but why shouldn't I put it that way? It gives him so much pleasure."
Another time the following short dialogue:—
"Eh bien, cher maître, que faites-vous maintenant?"
Meyerbeer: "Je me corrige toujours."
Rossini: "Moi je m'efface."
Whatever may have been the relative merits of the two masters in matters musical, it is certain that Rossini was acknowledgedfacile princepsin all concerning the cuisine, and we used to listen with due respect to his remarks on the mysteries of the culinary art.
Crémieux, the eminent lawyer, who was a guest at that dinner, had the reputation of being the plainest man in France, a sort of missing link. A story is told of him and Alexandre Dumas. The great novelist was unmistakably of the mulatto type, and Crémieux, who must have been addicted to making personal remarks, indiscreetly questioned him as to his descent. "Was your father a mulatto?" he asked. "Yes," answered Dumas, "my father was a mulatto, my grandfather a negro, and my great-grandfather a monkey; my family began where yours ends."
Quick at repartee as Dumas was, he did not always have the last word, as on an occasion when he received a letter from some playwright—I have forgotten his name—offering to collaborate with himin the writing of a play. "It is not usual," replied Dumas, "to yoke a horse and an ass together." "Comment done!" retorted the other. "How dare you, sir, insinuate that I am a horse?"
That Villa Rossini I visited ten years later under very different circumstances. It was in May 1871, after the terrible events that marked the reign of the Commune. I had not witnessed these, but had crossed over from London shortly after the Versailles troops had succeeded in making themselves masters of Paris.
The villa stood in its own grounds. The municipality had desired to present Rossini with the site; he would not, however, accept the gracious offer unreservedly, and so it was arranged that he should occupy it on very advantageous terms.
As I passed the gates that led to the grounds I knew so well, the first thing that struck me was a notice posted up and signed by the military authorities, to the effect that all unexploded bombs and other projectiles should be buried underground, awaiting the time when they would be collected by competent artillerymen.
I left others to do the burying, and made for the house. There was no Madame Rossini on the look-out, as she used to be in former days, ready to guard the approaches to her husband's study with Cerberus-like fidelity. It was some time before I could find anybody at all. A man-servant finally emerged from the basement; he was the only soul on the premises, and evidently much shaken by recentevents. It needed nobody to open the door, for one could walk in through large gaps in the walls, where the shells had done their work. Part of the staircase had been blown away, but enough of it stood to take me to the upper floor, to the room in which, three years ago, Rossini had died. The house until lately had been occupied by his widow; now all the furniture had been removed; but a large iron safe stood in the middle of the music-room, like a solid island, surrounded by a sea of brick and mortar rubbish.
I had looked round in vain for something worth preserving as a memento of this my last visit to the great Maestro's house, and had found nothing better than fragments of wall-paper and pieces of a shattered looking-glass. As I gave a final look at the scene of destruction, I descried a black-bordered paper all but buried in a thick layer of débris. Where all else was destroyed, that paper seemed a living thing. I brought it to the surface, and found it was an old copy ofThe Musical World, containing the obituary notice of Giacomo Rossini. When I returned to London I gave it to J. W. Davison, the editor of the journal in which it was published, so that it might be preserved to record the incidents of the master's life, and to attest the grievous disasters that befell the villa he loved so well.
Iwell rememberParis emerging from her trials. It is difficult to-day to realise the magnitude of the disaster which laid low the beautiful capital of France. When I arrived within its shattered walls, the monster conflagration that would have destroyed the whole city, had it not been for the timely arrival of the Versailles troops, was all but subdued. The firemen, however, were still kept busily engaged, for clouds of smoke and tongues of fire would at intervals burst forth from the smouldering ruins. Tottering walls on the one hand, hugefaçadesof masonry on the other, marked the places where but yesterday glorious specimens of architecture, ancient and modern, had stood. There was the shell of what had been the Tuileries, that palace built in the 16th century, which had seen so much of the history of France. Mobs had pillaged and sacked it; within its state-rooms one crowned head had been forced to wear the cap of liberty, a humiliation which did not save it from the knife of the guillotine. Some fifty years later a bourgeois king had to fly for his life from the palace; and last, it was an unfortunate Empress who had to makegood her escape, and seek refuge on the shores of England.
There would be no more pillaging and sacking now; the venerable specimen of the Renaissance style was destroyed. To-day the stranger is just shown the place where the Tuileries stood; then, as the walls crashed down, burying treasures and relics of bygone days in their fall, one was appalled by the tragedy enacted before one's eyes. I had my little personal recollections too. I had danced there more than once with some of the fairest Parisians; I had drunk the future Emperor's champagne with a conviction that it was quite the best of its kind, and was evidently intended to make us understand that our host meant business, imperial business, pretty sure to be settled ere long, whether we liked it or not.
Well, one fine old building is gone, I thought, as I turned away from the ruins, but at least the Louvre is saved. That marvel of architecture was intact. The principal works of art it contained had been taken to places of supposed safety, and the whereabouts of the Venus of Milo were said to be known only to some few persons, who had dug a hole and therein buried her. Much else had been providentially saved; there were large gaps in the Rue de Rivoli, but the unique old Tour St. Jacques had escaped unscathed. At the Palais de Justice the fire had stopped short on the threshold of the exquisite Sainte Chapelle, one of the most perfect works of the thirteenth century. I had with some difficulty obtained permission to roam over the ruins of that Palais de Justice and the Préfecture de Police, andwhilst the firemen were working to subdue the flames wherever they broke out afresh, I used my brush to make a sketch of the huge maze before me. There were bundles of official papers at my feet;Actes de NaissanceandActes de Décès, charred only, and quite easy to decipher, but as I touched them, they crumbled to ashes. Some seemingly well-preserved parchments I consigned to my pocket, but a few hours later I found little more than dust in their place. The Hôtel de Ville, too, which had fallen a prey to the flames, had many an association for me. Henri Lehmann, during the time I was studying under him, had been commissioned to decorate the great hall with a series of pictures. I had lent an apprentice's hand, and had seen them grow under his brush, as, in an incredibly short space of time, he produced what was thought to be the best work of his life—work destined to hand down his name to posterity as one of the most fertile and distinguished painters of the second empire. Ingres, too, who in those days was considered the greatest draughtsman since the time of Raphael, had contributed a masterpiece to the decoration of the hall, aplafond, "The Apotheosis of Napoleon I." This work I had also seen in progress. On the occasion of a visit to his studio I recollect a lady asking him, in effusive language, where he had found the models for the ideally classical horses attached to the triumphant car of the great conqueror. Ingres led her straight to the window. "There are my models, madam," he said bluntly, pointing to the cab-stand.
I wandered through Paris day after day, andeverywhere the ghastly traces of war, as it really is, confronted me; blood-stained flagstones, broken-down gun-carriages, barricades that had been stormed, and homes that had been wrecked. Everywhere the iron shutters of the shops were riddled with shot or broken open. One climbed as best one could over a heterogeneous mass ofimpedimenta, collected for attack or defence, or thrown away in precipitate flight. Every effort had been made to prevent petroleum being poured into the basement of the houses. The gratings in the streets had been boarded over and otherwise secured against those female fiends the Pétroleuses. Some of the wealthiest quarters of Paris were known to be undermined, and it was only in the nick of time that the Versailles troops arrived to prevent the execution of such written orders as, "Faites sauter le quartier de la Bourse."
The fashionable quarters and the suburbs of Paris had suffered terribly from the bombardment. I wandered for days over fragments of every mortal thing that had once been whole, past dismantled batteries, along the barren wastes of the Bois de Boulogne, and through avenues of wrecked villas. Costly furniture and works of art had been shattered to atoms by the enemy's bombs. In one place I came across a Louis Quinze sofa and chairs that had evidently been carried out for removal, and stood waiting so placidly, that they seemed to invite you to sit down and rest; and in one of the gardens there was a cottage piano, which appeared none the worse for its adventures; two coffee-cups stood unharmed upon it, showing that some two personshad taken their demie-tasse by the side of that piano.
The most striking effects of shot and shell showed themselves on the ornamental ironwork which had once enclosed those suburban villas. It seemed as if they had vented their fiercest passions on those beautifully designed gates and railings French art excels in producing. One could not suppress a feeling of pity as one saw them writhing in anguish and stretching out their weird iron arms as if in supplication. Here they were unhinged and started from their sockets; there their limbs, once so perfectly poised, were twisted into unsightly shapes, and stood out amongst the wreckage in fantastic and uncanny figures.
I had wended my way one afternoon to the revolutionary quarter of Belleville, and had got into conversation with a workman of more than average intelligence. Not feeling at our ease within earshot of the "Mouchards," as the growling, spying, myrmidons of the police are termed, and not liking the looks of thegensdarmes à chevalwith their revolvers at half-cock, we had adjourned to one of the numerous establishments kept by theMarchand de Vins, Traiteur, which take the place of our public-houses. There my workman became confidential and declared himself a Communist to the backbone. He scorned the idea that the German was his enemy.
"If I'm to fight at all," he said, "let me find an enemy for myself. Let me shoot therichard en face, the capitalist who has been exploiting me and mine. We'll make him and the like of him disgorgehis plunder, and then we'll start a fresh deal. As for the Germans, my dear sir, I dare say there are a lot of jolly good fellows amongst them, and plenty who would take a bumper, acanon de vin, with us, if they were here now, and drink to the perdition of the bourgeois."
"That is all very well," I answered, "but I'm pretty sure you were just like the rest, and went tearing along the boulevards and shouting 'A Berlin!' And you would have been only too jolly glad to get the Rhine, if you had had a——"
"The Rhine, monsieur!" he interrupted me, "the Rhine! Do you think I know what the blessed thing is; and, supposing we had got it, do you think they'd have given me any of it?"
That was twenty-eight years ago, and since then many a workman has learnt that he does not get his share of the "blessed thing" he has to fight for. I wonder whether he will give up fighting, or whether he will see to it that he gets his share.
It was an impressive sight that met the eye in the Place Vendôme. There was the famous column lying prostrate in huge fragments like so many mill-stones, with the bronze legends commemorating the conqueror's march, battered and crushed out of all seeming in their fall. Those gigantic vertebræ of the mighty pillar made one ponder on the vicissitudes of greatness, and on the ups and downs of heroic symbols. One could not help marvelling at the audacity of the men who had ruptured that spinal cord of patriotic self-glorification.
It was an artist, and a great one too, who plannedand directed the destruction of the work of art, Courbet, the most uncompromising of painters and of demagogues. I was living in Paris at the time his first great works were exhibited, and I recollect what a storm of abuse they raised. His "Enterrement à Ornans," a large and striking picture, crudely realistic, depicting, as it did, mourners at the open grave, with reddened noses and swollen eyes, was considered a deliberate insult offered to all idealists, romanticists, and mannerists. His picture, "La Baigneuse," was simply derided by the critics; there was no drawing, no modelling. "C'est un sac de noix!" A bag of nuts, not a woman of flesh and blood.
Well, Courbet's work has outlived criticism; history remembers him as achef d'école.
The only time I recollect meeting him was on the occasion of an international gathering of artists in Antwerp in 1861. He was quite a boon companion, and had a marked objection to retiring to rest before daylight. He would sing us jolly songs, one of which, "C'est l'amour qui nous mène,"[13]was a favourite of his.
The Commune went to work very systematically to bring down the huge column. An incision was made at the base in the shape of a notch; a double pulley was attached to the balustrade at the top, and another fixed to the ground in the Rue de la Paix, a rope passing through both to a capstan. When this was set in motion, after some preliminary difficulties had been overcome, the column oscillatedfor a moment, and then came crashing down in three colossal sections on to a bed of sand, fascines, and straw prepared for it, there to break up into a thousand smaller fragments. The statue of the great Emperor had lost its head and one arm.
An act of vandalism, we say. Yes, but of vandalism with a purpose. We can fancy Courbet declaring: "The work of art must be sacrificed as a warning to those who would honour and perpetuate the memory of selfish aggressors."
It was History herself he meant to drag from her pedestal—History, ever crowning herself with wreaths of laurel and halos of virtue. It was Art too he waged war upon, that Art which he deemed had too long served to glorify the rule of Force: sometimes in a picture or in a legion of pictures, as at Versailles, exalting Imperialism and inciting us to go forth and emulate the deeds and misdeeds of our ancestors; sometimes in a statue of some clever organiser of wholesale slaughter, appropriately cast in the bronze of cannon taken from the enemy; or, again, in a barbarous trophy, a triumphal arch—in fact, in a scalp of some kind, that, from generation to generation, we are taught to gloat over.
This was the wording of the decree which condemned the column to destruction:—
"The Commune of Paris"Considering that the Imperial Column of the Place Vendôme is a monument of barbarism, a symbol of brute force, of false glory, an encouragement ofmilitary spirit, a denial of international rights, a permanent insult offered by the conquerors to the conquered, a perpetual conspiracy against one of the great principles of the French Republic, namely fraternity,"Decrees:—"Sole article—The Vendôme Column is to be demolished."
"The Commune of Paris
"Considering that the Imperial Column of the Place Vendôme is a monument of barbarism, a symbol of brute force, of false glory, an encouragement ofmilitary spirit, a denial of international rights, a permanent insult offered by the conquerors to the conquered, a perpetual conspiracy against one of the great principles of the French Republic, namely fraternity,
"Decrees:—
"Sole article—The Vendôme Column is to be demolished."
One day—it was a wretched day, the rain pouring in torrents—I went to see the ruins of Saint Cloud. People were discussing the question as to who had really done the work of destruction there—the Germans, the Versaillais, or the Communards. To the poor victims who had come forth from their hiding-places, returning only to find their homes and hearths ruined, it could really matter little whether the grim work was done by the six of one or the half-a-dozen of the other.
Wandering along the streets in ruins, I was struck by one piece of high wall left standing out against the grey sky to bear witness to the strange caprices of the destructive element; a large red umbrella hung in its place on that wall, and a striped petticoat bedrizzled with rain was being blown about by the wind. The fireplace had kept its every-day appearance, whilst the floor beneath it had gone; on the mantelpiece stood some little household gods, bits of china, a clock, and various nick-nacks one could not distinguish at a distance. Close to me was a touching little group of victims. A woman with three girls, their ages ranging from eight to twelveyears, stood gazing at that wall which had once been part of their home. They did not give vent to their feelings in tears or loud lamentations, as so many around me did; the mother was simply dazed, the children overawed. They had come back to Saint Cloud from I know not where, and were carrying their little belongings tied up in cotton handkerchiefs. I think they would scarcely have been able to identify their home, if it had not been for the red umbrella and the striped petticoat.
After a while I spoke to the woman and elicited with some difficulty that her husband had been killed early in the campaign, one son was maimed for life, and the other had not been heard of for two months. When I gave her a few francs she put them in her pocket mechanically; her thoughts were elsewhere. I passed on to witness more destruction and distress. When I returned, some half-an-hour later, to where the high wall stood, I found the mother and the three girls just where I had left them, still hopelessly gazing at the household gods that were mocking their misery from on high.
It was not till that day that I quite realised what we mean when we speak of blank despair.
The recuperative power of the French people is truly extraordinary, and, from the first day and hour of his deliverance, the Parisian gave striking evidence of it. Endowed as he is with indomitable pluck, infinite resources, and inexhaustible light-heartedness, he could set to work with a will, or dance and fiddle with a vengeance, whilst the ashes of his city werestill glowing. It came quite natural to him to repossess himself of that city, and to drop unconcernedly into his old ways of life.
There he was once more, the typical Parisian who must have his daily stroll along the Boulevards; he must sit somewhere where he can sip something and see somebody else sipping or strolling. He must watch his opportunity of saying something polite to somebody, and, at a given hour, he must call for anabsintheand concentrate his thoughts on the importance of an approaching meal.
And there he was again, the expert diner we all know, devoutly pinning his napkin under his chin, and thanking the gods that at last the sacred rites of the dinner-table could be duly performed.
One of the characteristics of the Parisian, I always thought, is that exquisite politeness of his. What a lesson to us, who won't even make room for a fellow-creature in a 'bus if we can help it!
In former days I used to say that I could always tell, if I wanted, to what nationality any particular man in the motley crowd of loungers on the Boulevards belonged. I need but tread on his toes, and he would use strong language in his mother-tongue. The German would invoke the "holy thunder-weather," the Dutchman would be still more sacrilegious, the Englishman would damn something—probably the eyes I should have made use of; and so on—each would fling his pet wicked word at me. Only the Frenchman would raise his hat and say, "Pardon, monsieur."
Knowing and loving the amiable city as I did—I had spent altogether about six years there—I was deeply interested in her fortunes and misfortunes, and now warmly welcomed the first signs of returning prosperity.
The cannon's roar had ceased, people were coming from their cellars or other hiding-places, looking for their friends and congratulating one another on being alive. Crowds of sightseers filled the streets and stood gaping at the ruins or commenting on the unique spectacle before them. Barricades were being demolished, and squads of men and women were set to work to clear the roads of broken glass, splintered wood, and other accumulations of nondescript rubbish. Shops were being opened, and theDames de Comptoir, as correct and business-like as ever, were getting out their books. Goods and wares that had been hidden away, were being brought to light. Shopkeepers were counting up their losses and discounting their prospects.
Matters political were in abeyance. Whenever I asked, "What is to come next? What Government would you vote for?" I got the answer: "Cela nous est bien égal, monsieur, pourvu qu'il-y-ait du travail."[14]One lived in a sort of interregnum, a period of transition from lawlessness to order. War had ceased, but peace had only just begun to strike roots. There was no bragging, no cheap oratory—nobody seemed to think himself particularly "trahi."[15]There was no show of military rule. Even thesentries chatted freely with the bourgeois, and there were no ominous cries of "Passez au large," coupled with the significant thrust of the fixed bayonet, as one used to hear in the days of theCoup d'État. On the contrary, thousands of soldiers, with theirChassepotsslung carelessly across their shoulders, were sauntering along the streets, most of them evidently provincials, amazed at the grandeur of the capital they were visiting for the first time.
Cabs were about, and even the heavy three-horse omnibuses were resuming their well-regulated course; but no private carriages were to be seen. In fact, the upper ten as well as the submerged tenth seemed to have disappeared, and the odd million about was made up of thebourgeois, thepiou-piou,[16]thebadaud de province, and other sightseers.
I scorned conveyances of any kind, and tramped along on foot from morning to night, for it was only thus I felt I was my own master. I could pull up, stumble, or climb as circumstances required, or I could turn in, stand, drink, talk, listen, and argue—or, better still, hold my tongue.
In the evening darkness reigned, except in the neighbourhood of the cafés. There people were congregating as usual, seeking the light like so many moths, and settling like flies on the sugar that was to sweeten theirdemie-tasseor to be pocketed for home consumption. At eleven o'clock the cafés were closed, and nothing remained to do but to go home in the dark. The moths, by the way, must havehad a dull time of it, for the graceful lamp-posts had suffered so severely that very few of them were fit for service.
The Commune had naturally produced a great quantity of scurrilous literature and vile caricatures, some quite unmentionable; but they are interesting historically, throwing, as they do, a lurid light on the events of those days and the passions they evoked. I bought whatever I could find of such papers and drawings, as also a few of the more respectable publications, and the collection is a pretty complete one, including, as it does, copies of the Père Duchêne, La Lanterne, Le National, La Vérité, &c., and some sixty caricatures of the Emperor, the Empress, Thiers, Jules Favre, and many other leading men, all furnishing abundant material for recording and illustrating the politics, hysterics, and erotics of those troublesome times.
Towards the end of my stay I went to Saint Denis. Peace and its blessings were really coming, and welcome signs of their approach were not wanting; even little twigs of olive branches were being held out where I least expected to see them.
Saint Denis was still in the hands of the Germans, and was not to be evacuated till a stipulated sum, forming part of the war indemnity, had been paid. Officers and men quartered there had made themselves very much at home, and some did not seem to be on bad terms with the inhabitants, as in one case, when a bright young fellow on the German side seemed on particularly good terms with an attractive young lady on the French side. Heand I had got into conversation; he was evidently pleased to meet a countryman of his (I can be a German occasionally), and was disposed to be friendly and confidential. "Come with me," he said; "I will show you the prettiest girl in Saint Denis." I went to see "the prettiest girl," who, it seemed to me, had been watching for him at the window, and now came down to the door.
He was a non-commissioned officer in I forget which regiment. When not in uniform he was a lawyer—for aught I know, a rising youngRechtsanwalt, with plenty of clients. I hope so, for the sake of the young lady, who was charming, and was as much smitten with him as he was with her. He had taught her a few German words, which she could not pronounce without laughing and showing her pretty teeth; she again had lent him some books from her little library. He spoke French fluently, and was happy to be put through a course of French literature by his fair friend.
Love being thicker than blood, I feel sure they eventually got married; and after so romantic an opening, their story cannot but have proved interesting. Should anybody care to write it, I think the line to be taken should be this: They married, and lived "happy ever after"—as happily as their children would let them. They had four, differing widely in their tastes and convictions. One son enlisted in the German army; the other in the French. Both were deeply grieved to have fallen on evil times, when emperors and presidents were ever proclaiming the blessings of peace, and when even the people werebeginning to question the desirability of attacking their neighbours.
Of the daughters, one loved the Germans, and was unhappy because she was to marry a Frenchman her parents had selected; the other hated the Germans, and was broken-hearted because she was not to marry the Frenchman she loved.
It must all end happily, however, for it is essential that the moral should be pointed: Love your neighbour, if only to show you are unshackled by prejudice. Marry him or her, whether he or she is your hereditary foe or not, and settle down to a life of peace and happiness, that you may inaugurate, by your noble example, the blessed era, when the lion and the lamb shall no longer hesitate to go and do likewise.
But not often was it my good fortune to spend a pleasant hour as at Saint Denis and to imagine little romances built on slight foundations. The tragedy being enacted around me forced itself on my view more than once, when I met batches of miserable prisoners marched off, some to be judged by court-martial, others already sentenced to be shot. The Parisian looked on without exhibiting much interest in their fate. He had seen so much of bloodshed in every form lately that he had grown callous. The day of settlement had come, the murder of the hostages must be avenged, and thecanaillemust be cleared away, just as the broken glass and the wrecked barricades had to be.
The reign of terror continued; it had only changed its name. Now it was called Justice. Shockingspecimens of depraved humanity were those ill-fated prisoners, dragged from their haunts to be tried by the military authorities in Versailles.
I saw types such as only come to the surface when conflicting passions of the worst kind stir up the very dregs of society: dishevelled viragos, brutalised men, female fiends, men devils—hyænas, ready to spring and fasten their claws on you, were they not chained. I heard their howl of despair and their laugh of defiance, as they were led off to be shot.
And thus, whilst the beautiful city was smoothing her ruffled feathers and taking out a new lease of life, the poor wretches met their doom at the foot of the blood-spattered wall.
Wild beasts if you like—but men and women—our brothers and our sisters—alas! born in squalor, bred in vice, and tainted with hereditary ugliness of body and mind.
Who made them what they are? Let us try to find out, and, if we can, let us stand the guilty ones up against that wall, and clear them away with the other human wreckage. But no! neither you nor I would be left to do the clearing away.
Portrait of Robert Browning
Iwell remember, and it is often a source of infinite enjoyment to me to recall, many a trifling incident connected with the name of Robert Browning. He was the kindest and most indulgent of friends, and, as such, I remember him with gratitude and devotion; and he was the most honourable and lovable of men, and so it was but natural I should honour and love him.
What I can record about him is mostly of a personal character, and I only trust that, if any member of a Browning Society happens to come across these pages, he will not resent my inability to add more than a few descriptive touches to what is already known of the poet.
He was well aware that I had never really studied his works, in fact that I had only read a small portion of them; but he made allowances for that, as for my other shortcomings. He also knew that when, by dint of perseverance, I did master some difficult pages of his writing, none could more warmly appreciate the subtle beauties they contained than his humble friend.
"Last night I read Bishop Blougram," I toldhim on one occasion. "I went as far below the surface as I could get, but I need not tell you I did not reach the bottom."
"Try again," was all he answered; and when I asked who had been his models, he said that Cardinal Wiseman was his Bishop, and that Gigadibs was not sketched from any one particular person. The Cardinal, he told me, had himself reviewed the poem favourably.
I first met Browning at my cousins the Bensons. They occupied one of those unique houses in that finest of avenues, Kensington Palace Gardens. Notwithstanding the name, the houses really have gardens, and command an unlimited view over the grounds which extend from Kensington to Hyde Park. Inside the hospitable mansion all that was best in the world of art and literature would assemble, and men and women of note felt so much at home there, that they would just lay down their laurel wreaths and wipe off their war-paint, before they came in, and move about as if they were ordinary mortals. They ate and drank too, as if anxious to show their appreciation of Mrs. Benson's table; she certainly made a point of placing the best of nectar and ambrosia before the gods, her guests. And the chef saw to it, that the menus should be worded with due regard to historical truth. I recollect one occasion when he had introduced "Cotelettes à la Charles Dickens" on the programme.
"You had better change that," said Mrs. Benson, "and put 'à la Thackeray'; he is dining with us to-night."
"Oh, madam," protested the chef, "surely you don't mean that; everybody would at once recognise them as 'Cotelettes à la Dickens.'"
Dinner was usually followed by the most perfect music, for the gods loved to play to one another, and it needed no pressure to induce a Joachim to open his violin-case, or to lead the pianist of the day straight to the piano. But on one occasion, I forget why, there was some difficulty with Madame Schumann; she had certainly not taken one or two broad hints to the effect that she was wanted. I was, to be sure erroneously, supposed to be devoid of all shyness, and was therefore deputed to get her to the piano. I had known her years ago when, as a girl, she came to Leipsic with her father, and I remember exchanging knowing winks with my sisters behind old Wieck's back, when he held forth about his unique and incomparable method of teaching, as exemplified in his daughters Clara and Marie. He had a queer way of putting it, but he was certainly not far wrong in his estimate of the method and its results.
When I asked Madame Schumann whether she was inclined to play, I was very badly received. She was "particularly disinclined," so I changed the conversation. But presently—quite by chance to be sure—I mentioned her husband's "Carnaval." "There is one part," I said, "which I particularly love: the 'March of the Davidsbündler,' you know. If I could only hear you play just that page or two!"
"Page or two indeed," she said, boiling over with indignation. "Wenn man den Carnaval spielt,spielt man ihn ganz!" (If you play the "Carnival," you play it from beginning to end.)
And an instant afterwards she was at the piano, throwing her whole soul into that wonderful piece of tone-painting.
Elizabeth Benson was one of the many gifted members of the Lehmann family; the two eminent painters Henri and Rudolf Lehmann were her brothers; so too Frederick, her husband's partner in the well-known firm of ironmasters, Naylor, Vickers & Co. And he, Mr. Benson, was a shrewd German-American who had amassed a fortune in business and lived in perfect style. Being a man of culture and refined tastes, he had a remarkably well selected library and had surrounded himself with many choice works of art.
Browning's son—he had but one child—was also a welcome guest at 10 Kensington Palace Gardens. He was equally gifted as a musician and as a painter, so much so, that for a time he seemed inclined to sit down between two stools and await events. This caused his father some anxiety, and it was evidently with a feeling of relief, that he came to tell me one day, that Pen had got up and made his choice of stools in favour of the one marked Painting. The decision was due to Millais. Pen had accompanied him on a visit to Scotland, and whilst Millais was painting his picture of "Scotch Firs," his young friend made a study of the same subject, which gave evidence of so much talent that Millais unhesitatingly advised him to devote himself to art. When Browning came to tell me ofthe very satisfactory incident, he asked my advice as to the best opportunity for study open to him. In those days, very different from the days we can boast of now, the best advice to give was that he should go abroad. I suggested Antwerp, and further recommended my friend Heyermans as the best teacher I knew. My advice was taken, and it led to so excellent a result that Browning never tired of expressing his gratitude to me for having found the right man and having put his son in the right place. Under the guidance of that right man Pen made rapid progress and soon produced very striking work.
When he began to exhibit, no father could be more anxious about a son's reputation or prouder of his successes, than was Browning. Praise such as came from the lips or pens of Leighton, Millais, and other friends, warmed his heart, confirming, as it did, his belief in Pen's powers. He could be very sensitive too, when full justice was not done to that son, as when his statue of Driope was refused at the Royal Academy. Young Browning, not content with using the brush to give shape to his artistic conceptions, had taken to the sculptor's tools. These he had learned to handle when, after a prolonged stay in Antwerp, he went to Paris and studied sculpture under Rodin, an advantage of which to this day he is particularly proud. This life-size figure of Driope was the outcome of much study and thought, and had been so warmly appreciated on all sides, that it was deemed worthy of being cast in bronze. When it was rejected at the Royal Academy,Browning was indignant, eloquently indignant, and well he might be, for the work was a remarkable one, and as it now stands in the vast Entrance Hall of the Palazzo Rezzonico, many think as I do, that it can challenge comparison with some of the great masterpieces in Venice.
I need scarcely say that the adverse verdict of the rulers at Burlington House did not shake his confidence in Pen or in his first teacher. The poet's gratitude to the latter was expressed in ever-varying forms. He writes to him: "I have to repeat—what I never can be tired of repeating, however inadequately I make my words correspond with my feelings—how deeply grateful I am to you for your instrumentality in the success of my son, which I am sure he will have attributed to the admirable master whose true 'son' in art he is bound to consider himself." When, some years later, Heyermans settled in London, Browning never lost an opportunity of smoothing the artist's path among strangers, in the country which has since become the country of his adoption.
As I may presently allow myself to speak of some of my pictures which Browning liked, it may not be inappropriate to record here that there were others which he disliked. Such were some Japanese subjects, which my love of the newly imported art had impelled me to paint. At the time I am speaking of—in the early seventies—the work of the Japanese was only just coming to the front; there was no shop to display it in all London or Paris. The first things of the kind I can remember herewere some of those cheap paper fans on sale at a very popular little shop in the Brompton Road, Harrod's, now developed into one of London's monster emporiums. In Holland I had previously come across some wonderful specimens of Japanese painting and weaving, and when I next saw a unique collection of such work in the Paris Exhibition, my admiration was fairly kindled into enthusiasm. Shortly afterwards the same exhibits found their way into the hands of those syrens with the ivory hammer, known as Christie & Manson's, and on that occasion my savings foundtheirway into the same hands. I was equally fascinated by Japanese art at Farmer & Rogers', where I soon made friends with one of their staff, a promising young connoisseur, Mr. Liberty, the same who now rules supreme in Regent Street.
Now Browning worshipped—I thought rather exclusively—at the shrine of old Italian art, and I do not think he ever really appreciated the Japanese. Certain it is that he disliked the pictures I painted when my Japano-mania was at its height; notably one entitled "On the Banks of the Kanagawa," which he condemned, perhaps not without good reason, for I had never been on the banks of that or any other Jap river, and my figures, although clad in the beautiful dresses I had bought, were more or less evolved from my inner consciousness. In fact I would not hesitate to say that the picture was bad, were I not afraid of being thought wanting in respect to the august body of Royal Academicians, who gave it a very excellent place on their walls. As their judgmentis known to be infallible, Browning, for once in the way, must have been labouring under a misconception.
If so, he but too generously made up for it in later years when, on many occasions, he showed the greatest interest in my work. He became a frequent visitor at the studio, and the hours he spent with me are amongst the happiest in my artistic experience. To him it was a never-failing source of pleasure to visit his artist friends, and with more than one of them did he make himself thoroughly at home. He had the gift of putting everybody at his ease, sometimes exchanging a few pleasant words with the servant who came to answer the door, sometimes chatting with the models; he was quite unconventional, and would just as soon say, "He don't" as "He doesn't." A great friend of his was Jack Turner, a charming specimen of the London waif, a perfect little angel in his tenth year, but an angel, as it unfortunately proved, with a stumble and a fall, in consequence of which he had to do his growing up in a reformatory, and who asks for the price of a glass of beer when I meet him now. "Good morning, Mr. Browning." "Thank you, Mr. Browning," the little angel would say, for he had quickly realised that the name had a good sound, and the poet would stroke his curly hair and press the price of an ounce of sweets into his innocent little hand.
Then there was Laura, a model, who had one of the most sculptural figures I have ever seen. She had come to me in the regular course of business to get work, accompanied by another young girl; herfeatures were not regular, but mobile and expressive, her eyes restless, and her hair rebellious as it hung in brown wavelets over her forehead. Her friend was a contrast—the regular blue-eyed maiden, fair-haired and fair-skinned. I took their names and addresses, putting them down as head models, for, in answer to my question whether they sat for the figure, Laura had replied, "No; certainly not." It was the close of the season, and I had much work to finish before I could leave town. I told my visitors so, and returned to my easel, but they were evidently disinclined to go; they looked around as if fascinated by the artistic surroundings, and after a whispered consultation, they hinted, carefully veiling their words, that they had no insuperable objection to unveiling. It was evident that they were fired with lofty ambitions of "the altogether" kind. (Immortal creation of my friend Du Maurier, that word,the altogether, which lulls suspicion and alarm in the breast of the Philistine, and checks the blush that would rise to the cheek of the British matron.) I bluntly told my would-be models that I was working against time, and that for some months to come I should not be able to use them, whether in sections or as a whole. But they were not to be dissuaded, once having made up their minds to qualify forthe altogether.
Befittingly coy and shy, Laura's friend emerged from the dressing-room, the type of the English maiden, the rosebud of sweet seventeen. The milk of human beauty flowed in her veins, tinting her with creamy whites from head to foot; one onlywanted some dove-coloured greys to model her forms, till at the extremities one would put in a few touches of pink madder or of Laque de garance rose dorée. It is a beautiful little type, "rosed from top to toe in flush of youth." Greuze could paint it, and others too; but whenever I attempted it, I have found that I was not good at rendering the girlish forms and the strawberry-and-cream colour.
Very different was Laura. She came into the room as if to the manner born, freely and easily. She had seemed rather short of stature and awkward in her movements. Now she was tall and graceful, and so sculptural in form that at first you would scarcely notice her colour. You could not render her dull bronze-like tints without mixing your light-reds with cobalt blue or with real ultramarine at a guinea an ounce, if you could afford it.
I did not break out into Pygmalionic enthusiasm, but I felt that I must leave all else and study the line that started from the neck, and went straight down to the heel, unimpeded by petty details or any of those non-essentials which just mark the difference between the real in Nature and the ideal in Art. The next day I began a picture of her which has since found its way to America. My friend Legros chancing to look in when she was sitting, so warmly appreciated her that I invited him to come and make studies from her at my studio occasionally; of those I have a very beautiful one drawn for hisbas-relief"La Fontaine," which many will remember having seen at one of the early exhibitions in the Grosvenor Gallery.
Couldn't Browning be indignant when the British matron presumed to misinterpret the artist's glow of enthusiasm! Doubly indignant, when the matron took the shape of a patron or the title of a Royal Academician with a vote on the Council of selection, or a hand on the Hanging Committee.
"The impropriety lies in the objection," he would say, "and I have put what I think of it in my Furini."[17]
Browning had a marked predilection for a certain chair in my studio. It is a cross-breed between what the French call acrapaudand we an easy-chair. In this he was installed one afternoon, when Laura was perched on the model-table, artificially supported, as best she could be, to give me a flying position. I was at work on one of two companion pictures which, for want of a better title, I had called "The Cloud-Compeller" and "The Cloud-Dispeller." In the first a deep-toned figure gathers the rolling clouds together; in the second, a brighter child of the skies peeps out from behind them.
"You might take some lines from Shelley's 'Cloud' for those pictures," suggested Browning.
"Yes—Shelley's Cloud," I answered. "To be sure—Let me see—Oh yes, it is one of those beautiful poems I know, but can't remember."
"Oh," he began, leaning back in the easy-chair—"Don't you remember?
And once started, he recited the whole poem. Recited is scarcely the word. He simply told us all about "The daughter of the earth and the nursling of the sky," and he conjured up, with the slightest of emphasis, pictures of "the whirlwinds unfurled, the stars that reel and swim," and
I went on painting—and listened. Laura kept on flying—and listened. She was an educated girl, and knew as well as I did that we might consider ourselves privileged listeners.
Laura had had quite a long spell of work, considering that the office of a cloud-compeller is not a sinecure, and she was well entitled to a rest. Browning said something to that effect as he rose to go, and, adding that she was a brave and conscientious model, he slipped half-a-crown into her hand. When I laid down my palette to go to the door with him, the usual little word-squabble had to be gone through. No argument of mine would ever persuade him that I had a right to see him to the door, but I often did so, heedless of his protest. On the other hand, no argument of his could ever persuade me thathewas justified in seeing me tohisdoor, but he always managed to do so, whether I was persuaded or not. He had stairs to go down and up again; I had not, so it was most unfair, but that was Browning all over—always afraid to give trouble, ever ready to take it.
When I got back to the studio, a new picture metmy eye. I found Laura giving vent to her feelings in a wild dance of jubilation, the half-crown sparkling above her head as she held it up triumphantly with both hands, whilst clusters of brown hair which had been carefully pinned up out of the way, for I was painting her back, now cascaded over her shoulders and down to her waist, suggesting new and original shapes for fashionable capes or opera-cloaks. When Nature's mantle had once more been pinned up and a drapery substituted for it, she settled down in the chair the master had just vacated, and proceeded to discuss the grave question as to what should be done with the half-crown. She scorned my suggestion that she should spend it on a pair of gloves, and then and there decided to have it made into a brooch as a memento of the memorable afternoon.
The next day I received a letter from Browning indicating the particular passages from Shelley's poem which he thought would be suitable to my pictures.
That Laura was a queer girl; it was not till months after her first visit to me that I chanced to find out she was a good pianist and had a pretty voice, and only when she had got quite acclimatised in the studio did I elicit the truth about that first visit. She had always put me off with the evasive answer that "a friend" had given her my address, but at last she confided to me that there was no friend in the case.
"We were walking down Sloane Street," she said, "Amy Stewart and I, when we saw your board up with 'The Studio, Cadogan Gardens' on it. Your dog was at the gate wagging his tail, and seemedlike asking us in. I patted him, and said to Amy, 'Let's go in for a lark and say we are models.' And she said, 'Yes; you go first.' So we rang the bell and asked for the artist. You said you were busy and hadn't much time to look at us, and you didn't seem to want us—so we stopped." Her father, I then found out, was a well-to-do builder, much absorbed in his business. No, she said, in answer to my question, he was not aware that she was sitting; her mother was, but had never asked for particulars. Let well alone, I thought, anxious as I was not to lose my model. But not long afterwards I was much startled by Laura's announcement that the sittings must henceforth be given up. She was very sorry, but she was forbidden to come any more.
"What has happened?" I asked in dismay; "your father? your mother?" "Oh no." "Well, do have it out; nobody else surely has a right to interfere." "Well, yes," she said; "Father O'Brien has." I saw it all; she was a good Roman Catholic, and her father confessor had become alarmed, and had put in his veto. "Is that all?" I broke in, much relieved. "Well, Laura, you did startle me—thank goodness, it is only a priest; he of all people couldn't have meant it seriously. He wouldn't be so ungrateful after all we artists have done for the Church. Think of the old masters, Laura; you must go to Father O'Brien and remind him of Raphael and all the saints and Madonnas he painted. Why, to be sure, he must know that even the divine Raphael could not have given us their souls without their bodies, and that even he would never have drapedhis models till he had made a careful study of those respected bodies. Oh no, there is nothing to be feared from a good priest; you must go at once, Laura, and speak to him."
Whether she went or not, and whether, having duly weighed my argument, Father O'Brien was struck with remorse, I do not know, but certain it is that Laura came, sat, and helped me conquer the difficulties yet to be grappled with in two pictures I had begun from her.
I was travelling from the sunny South back to the cheerless North. It was in January, and I was returning from Italy, where I had spent some months, to my own home and hearth; back to the chimney that I knew would smoke, to the pipes that would probably burst, and the blacks that would certainly fly. Serpentining along the coast of the Riviera, I awoke in the early morning and peeped through the window just by my side in the sleeping-car. Farewell to the sea and to the sparkle on the playful little waves that were gently breaking against the shrub-covered rocks; farewell to the middle distance and to the distance, and generally to anything worthy to be termed a horizon. Presently all that will be replaced by somebody's stone wall opposite my own stone wall, or by a growler or a Piccadilly lamp-post in a fog. And I shall wear a thick overcoat out of doors, and sit peacefully installed at my own writing-table in-doors. And the organ-grinder will come to grind under my windows, and to remind me of the country I love so well—and he will keepon grinding till it is time to get up and conduct him to the nearest police-station.
Then, too, I shall meet my friends, and they will ask me where I have been, and tell me where they have been; and, one and all, they will want to know what I am painting for the Royal Academy, and not have the slightest notion how insulting the question is, particularly if—il n'y a que la vérité qui blesse—Ihavebeen paintingforthe Royal Academy.
That is what I was thinking as we popped into tunnels and out again into the bright sunshine. Then—I don't know whether I fell asleep or whether I kept awake—but I certainly dreamt the most beautiful pictures ever painted. I could not put them on canvas to save my life, any more than I could put them on paper; but there they were, just across borderland, and I saw them with my own eyes, and not as one usually sees them, cramped by ugly gold mouldings at so much a foot.
There was one creature of extraordinary beauty—a goddess she must have been—with tresses of molten gold; she had got into a big shell which I had bought in Naples (they call itterebra), and, stretching herself full length in it, she had fallen asleep. Then other shells I had left behind in those stalls that line Santa Lucia came up from the deep, and a little lithe-limbed urchin—I felt sure I had seen him before—ensconced himself in one of them as in an arm-chair; and next—such are dreams—two darling little nieces of mine came toddling along from Tedworth Square, S.W. London, stark naked, and straightway condensed themselves into one meditative water-baby, that loved the shells as I did, and cuddled them as I couldn't.
Dreams to be sure—fancies, mocking visions of beauty, not to be realised, I know it well, but to the artist life would not be worth living if it were not for the glorious excitement of hunting the will-o'-the-wisp.
So I began what I called the shell-picture shortly after my return to London. Browning was in sympathy with my subject, and often came when I was tackling it. In the afternoons he was a man of leisure, his mornings being devoted to his own work, which he would take up when he had read theTimesand answered his letters. After luncheon he very rarely returned to his study. He would go out about two o'clock, perhaps to walk down to the Athenæum Club, where on Saturdays he was to be seen very regularly, reading the weekly papers, or he would visit his friends. Amongst those his artist friends were the most favoured, and more than one of them, I am sure, would be better qualified than I am to fill a chapter of reminiscences, headed "Browning at the Studio." He himself often speaks in his letters of the pleasure it gives him to associate with them.
"I scribble this," he writes on one occasion, "in case I should be unable to look in to-morrow afternoon—as I will, if I can, however: always enjoying, as I do, the sight of creation by another process than that of the head, with only pen and paper to help. How expeditiously the brush works!"
And another time he says—