VII PRIVATION

Once back in Paris, and fairly started in Lesueur’s class, I began to worry about my debt to de Pons.

It would certainly never be paid off out of my monthly allowance of a hundred and twenty francs. I therefore got some pupils for singing, flute and guitar, and, by dint of strict economy, in a few months I scraped together six hundred francs, with which I hurried off to my kind creditor.

How could I save out of such a sum? Well, I had a tiny fifth-floor room at the corner of the Rue de Harley and the Quai des Orfèvres, I gave up restaurant dinners and contented myself with a meal of dry bread with prunes, raisins or dates, which cost about fourpence.

As it was summer time I took my dainties, bought at the nearest grocer’s, and ate them on that little terrace on the Pont Neuf at the foot of Henry IV.’s statue; watching the while the sun set behind Mont Valerien, with its exquisite reflections in the murmuring river below, and pondering over Thomas Moore’s poems, of which I had lately found a translation.

But de Pons, troubled at my privations—which, since we often met, I could not hide from him—brought fresh disaster upon me by a piece of well-meant but fatal interference. He wrote to my father, telling him everything, and asking for the balance of his debt. Now my father already repented bitterly his leniency towards me; here had I been five months in Paris without in the least bettering my position. No doubt he thought that I had nothing to do but present myself at the Institute to carry all before me: win the Prix de Rome, write a successful opera, get the Legion of Honour, and a Government pension, etc., etc.

Instead of this came news of an unpaid debt. It was a blow and naturally reacted on me.

He sent de Pons his six hundred francs, and told me that, if I refused to give up my musical wild-goose chase, I must depend on myself alone, for he would help me no more.

As de Pons was paid, and I had my pupils, I decided to stay in Paris—my life would be no more frugal than heretofore. I was really working very steadily at music. Cherubini, of the orderly mind, knowing I had not gone through the regular Conservatoire mill to get into Lesueur’s class, said I must go into Reicha’s counterpoint class, since that should have preceded the former. This, of course, meant double work.

I had also, most happily, made friends some time before with a young man named Humbert Ferrand—still one of my closest friends—who had written the Francs-Juges libretto for me, and in hot haste I was writing the music.

Both poem and music were refused by the Opera committee and were shelved, with the exception of the overture; I, however, used up the best motifs in other ways. Ferrand also wrote a poem on the Greek Revolution, which at that time fired all our enthusiasm; this too I arranged. It was influenced entirely by Spontini, and was the means of giving my innocence its first shock at contact with the world, and of awakening me rudely to the egotism of even great artists.

Rudolph Kreutzer was then director of the Opera House, where, during Holy Week, some sacred concerts were to be given. Armed with a letter of introduction from Monsieur de Larochefoucauld, Minister of Fine Arts, and with Lesueur’s warm commendations, I hoped to induce Kreutzer to give my scena.

Alas for youthful illusions!

This great artist—author of the Death of Abel, on which I had written him heaven only knows what nonsense some months before—received me most rudely.

“My good friend” (he did not know me in the least), he said shortly, turning his back on me, “we can’t try new things at sacred concerts—no time to work at them. Lesueur knows that perfectly well.”

With a swelling heart I went away.

The following Sunday Lesueur had it out with him in the Chapel Royal, where he was first violin. Turning on my master in a temper, he said:

“Confound it all! If we let in all these young folks, what is to become of us?”

He was at least plain spoken!

Winter came on apace. In working at my opera I had rather neglected my pupils, and my Pont Neuf dining-room, growing cold and damp, was no longer suitable for my feasts of Lucullus.

How should I get warm clothes and firewood? Hardly from my lessons at a franc a piece, since they might stop any day.

Should I write to my father and acknowledge myself beaten, or die of hunger in Paris? Go back to La Côte to vegetate? Never. The mere idea filled me with maddening energy, and I resolved to go abroad to join some orchestra in New York or Mexico, to turn sailor, buccaneer, savage, anything, rather than give in.

I can’t help my nature. It is about as wise to sit on a gunpowder barrel to prevent it exploding as it is to cross my will.

I was nearly at my wits’ end when I heard that the Théâtre des Nouveautés was being opened for vaudeville and comic opera. I tore off to the manager to ask for a flautist’s place in the orchestra. All filled! A chorus singer’s? None left, confound it all! However the manager took my address and promised to let me know if, by any possibility there should be a vacancy. Some days later came a letter saying that I might go and be examined at the Freemason’s Hall, Rue de Grenelle. There I found five or six poor wights in like case with myself, waiting in sickening anxiety—a weaver, a blacksmith, an out-of-work actor and a chorister. The management wanted basses, my voice was nothing but a second-rate baritone; how I prayed that the examiner might have a deaf ear.

The manager appeared with a musician named Michel, who still belongs to the Vaudeville orchestra. His fiddle was to be our only accompaniment.

We began. My rivals sang, in grand style, carefully prepared songs, then came my turn. Our huge manager (appropriately blessed with the name of St Leger) asked what I had brought.

“I? Why nothing.”

“Then what do you mean to sing?”

“Whatever you like. Haven’t you a score, some singing exercise, anything?”

“No. And besides”—with resigned contempt—“I don’t suppose you could sing at sight if we had.”

“Excuse me, I will sing at sight anything you give me.”

“Well, since we have no music, do you know anything by heart?”

“Yes. I know the Danaïdes, Stratonice, the Vestal, Œdipus, the two Iphigenias, Orpheus, Armida——”

“There, that will do! That will do! what a devil of a memory you must have! Since you are such a prodigy, give us “Elle m’a prodigué” from Sacchini’s Œdipus. Can you accompany him, Michel?”

“Certainly. In what key?”

“E flat. Do you want the recitative too?”

“Yes. Let’s have it all.”

And the glorious melody:

rolled forth, while the poor listeners, with pitifully down-cast faces, glanced at each other recognising that, though I might be bad, they were infinitely worse.

The following day I was engaged at a salary of fifty francs a month.

And this was the result of my parents’ efforts to save me from the bottomless pit! Instead of a cursed dramatic composer I had become a damned theatre chorus-singer, excommunicated with bell, book and candle. Surely my last state was worse than my first!

One success brought others. The smiling skies rained down two new pupils and a fellow-provincial, Antoine Charbonnel, whom I met when he came up to study as an apothecary. Neither of us having any money, we—like Walter in the Gambler—cried out together:

“What! no money either? My dear fellow, let’s go into partnership.”

We rented two small rooms in the Rue de la Harpe and, since Antoine was used to the management of retorts and crucibles, we made him cook. Every morning we went marketing and I, to his intense disgust, would insist on bringing back our purchases under my arm without trying to hide them. Oh, pharmaceutical gentility! it nearly landed us in a quarrel.

We lived like princes—exiled ones—on thirty francs a month each. Never before in Paris had I been so comfortable. I began to develop extravagant ideas, bought a piano—such a thing! it cost a hundred and ten francs. I knew I could not play it, but I like trying chords now and then. Besides, I love to be surrounded by musical instruments and, were I only rich enough, would work in company with a grand piano, two or three Erard harps, some wind instruments and a whole crowd of Stradivarius violins and ’cellos.

I decorated my room with framed portraits of my musical gods, and Antoine, who was as clever as a monkey with his fingers (not a very good simile, by-the-way, since monkeys only destroy) made endless little useful things—amongst others a net with which, in spring-time, he caught quails at Montrouge, to vary our Spartan fare.

But the humour of the whole situation lay in the fact that, although I was out every evening at the theatre, Antoine never guessed—during the whole time we lived together—that I had the ill-luck to tread the boards and, not being exactly proud of my position, I did not see the force of enlightening him. He supposed I was giving lessons at the other end of Paris.

It seems as if his silly pride and mine were about on a par. Yet no; mine was not all foolish vanity. In spite of my parents’ harshness, for nothing in the world would I have given them the intense pain of knowing how I gained my living. So I held my tongue and they only heard of my theatrical career—as did Antoine Charbonnel—some seven or eight years after it ended, through biographical notices in some of the papers.