XIX IN THE MOUNTAINS

I quickly fell into the Academy routine. A bell called us to meals, and we went as we were—with straw hats, blouses plastered with clay, slippered feet, no ties—in fact, in studio undress.

After breakfast we lounged about the garden at quoits, tennis, target practice, shooting the misguided blackbirds who came within range, or trained our puppies; in all of which amusements M. Horace often joined us.

In the evening, at that everlasting Café Greco, we smoked the pipe of peace with the “men down below,” as we dubbed artists not attached to the Academy. After which we dispersed; those who virtuously returned to the Academy barracks gathering in the garden portico, where my bad guitar and worse voice were in great request, and where we sang Freyschütz, Oberon, Iphigenia or Don Giovanni, for, to the credit of my messmates be it spoken, their musical taste was far from low.

On the other hand, we sometimes had what we called English concerts. We each chose a different song and sang it in a different key, beginning by signal one after another; as this concert in twenty-four keys went on crescendo, the frightened dogs in the Pincio kept up a howling obligato and the barbers on the Piazza di Spagna down below winked at each other, saying slyly, “French music!”

On Thursdays we went to Madame Vernet’s receptions, where we met the best society in Rome; and on Sundays we usually went long excursions into the country. With the director’s permission, longer journeys might be undertaken and usually several of our number were absent.

As for me, since Rome never appealed to me, I took refuge in the mountains; had I not done so, I doubt whether I could have lived through that time. It may seem strange that the mighty shade of old Rome should not impress me, but I had come from Paris, the centre of civilisation, and was at one blow severed from music, from theatres (they were only open for four months), from literature, since the Papal censor excluded almost everything that I cared to read, from excitements, from everything that, to me, meant real life.

Balls, evening parties, shooting days in the Campagna, and rides made up the inane mill-round in which I turned. Add to that the scirocco, the incessant yearning for my beloved art, my sorrowful memories, the misery of being for two years exiled from the musical world, and the utter impossibility of composing in that stagnating atmosphere, and it will hardly be wondered at that I was as savage as a trained bull-dog, and that the well-meant efforts of my friends to divert me only drove me to the verge of madness.

I remember in one of my Campagna rides with Mendelssohn expressing my surprise that no one had ever written a scherzo on Shakespeare’s sparkling little poem Queen Mab. He, too, was surprised, and I was very sorry I had put the idea into his head. For years I lived in dread that he had used it, for he would have made it impossible—or, at any rate, very risky—for anyone to attempt it after him. Luckily he forgot.

My usual remedy for spleen was a trip to Subiaco, which seemed to put new life into me.

An old grey suit, a straw hat, a guitar, a gun and six piastres were all my stock-in-trade. Thus I wandered, shooting or singing, careless where I might pass the night; sometimes hurrying, again stopping to investigate some ancient tomb, to listen silently to the distant bells of St Peter’s, far away in the plain; interrupting my hunt for a flock of lapwing to jot down a note for a symphony, and, in short, enjoying to the full my absolute freedom.

Sometimes—a glorious landscape spread before me—I chanted, to the guitar accompaniment, long-remembered verses of the Æneid, the death of Pallas, the despair of Evander, the sad end of Amata, and the death of Lavinia’s noble lover, and worked myself up to an incredible pitch of excitement that ended in floods of tears. Elicited originally by the woes of these mythical beings, my overwhelming grief ended by becoming personal, and my tears flowed in self-pity for my sorrows, my doubtful future, my broken career.

The odd thing was that, all the time, I was quite able to analyse my feelings, although I ended by collapsing under these chaotic miseries, murmuring a mixture of Virgil, Dante and Shakespeare—“Nessun maggior dolore—che ricordarsi—O poor Ophelia!—good-night, sweet ladies—vitaque cum gemitu—sub umbras—” and so fell fast asleep.

How crazy, you say? Yes, but how happy. Sensible people cannot understand this intensity of being, this actual joy in existing, in dragging from life the uttermost it has to give in height and depth. Here, in the Parisian whirlpool, how well I recall the wild Abruzzi country where I spent so long.

Bitter-sweet memories of days now passed for ever. Days of utter irresponsible freedom to abolish time, to scorn ambition, to forget love and glory.

Oh strong, grand Italy! Wild Italy! Heedless of that sister Italy—the Italy of Art!

In time I became friendly with many of the villagers; one in particular, named Crispino, grew very fond of me; he not only got me perfumed pipe-stems (I had not then found out that I disliked the sort of excitement produced by tobacco) but balls, powder and even percussion caps. I first won his affection by helping to serenade his mistress and by singing a duet with him to that untameable young person; then fixed them by a present of two shirts and a pair of trousers. Crispino could not write, so when he had anything to tell me he came to Rome. What were thirty leagues to him?

At the Academy we usually left our doors open; one January morning—having left the mountains in October I had had three months’ boredom—on turning over in bed, I found, standing over me, a great sun-burnt scamp with pointed hat and twisted leggings, waiting quite quietly till I woke.

“Hallo, Crispino! What brings you here?”

“Oh, I have just come to—see you.”

“Yes; what next?”

“Well—just now——”

“Just now?”

“To tell the truth—I’ve got no money.”

“Now come! That’s something like the truth. You have no money; what business is that of mine, oh mightiest of scamps?”

“I’m no scamp. If you call me a scamp because I have no money, you are right, but if it is because I was two years at Civita Vecchia, you are wrong. I wasn’t sent to the galleys for stealing, but just for good honest shots at strangers in the mountains.”

It was all nonsense, of course, I don’t believe he ever shot so much as a monk. However, he was hurt in his feelings and would only accept three piastres, a shirt and a neckerchief.

The poor fellow was killed two years ago in a brawl. Shall I meet him in a better world?

In the miserable oblivion and dishonour into which music has sunk in Rome I found but one small sign of honest life. It was among the pfifferari, players of a little popular instrument, a surviving relic of antiquity. They were strolling musicians who, at Christmastide, came down from the mountains in groups of four or five armed with bagpipes and pfifferi, a kind of oboe, to play before the images of the Virgin.

I used to spend hours in watching them, there was something so quaintly mysterious in their wild aspect as they stood—head slightly turned over one shoulder, their bright dark eyes fixed devoutly on the holy figure, almost as still as the image itself.

At a distance the effect is indescribable and few escape its spell. When I heard it in its native haunts, among the volcanic rocks and dark pine forests of the Abruzzi, I could almost believe myself transported back through the ages to the days of Evander, the Arcadian.

Of this time, musically, I have little to tell. I wrote a long and incoherent overture to Rob Roy, which I burnt immediately after its performance in Paris; the Scène aux Champs of the Symphonie Fantastique, which I rewrote entirely in the Borghese gardens; the Chant de Bonheur for Lelio, and lastly a little song called La Captive, inspired by Victor Hugo’s lovely poem.

One day I was at Subiaco with Lefebvre, the architect. As he drew, he knocked over a book with his elbow; it was Les Orientales. I picked it up and it opened at that particular page. Turning to Lefebvre I said:

“If I had any paper I would write music to this exquisite poem; I can hear it.”

“That is soon done,” said he, and he ruled a sheet whereon I wrote my song. A fortnight later I remembered it and shewed it to Mademoiselle Vernet, saying:

“I wish you would try this, for I have quite forgotten what it is like.”

I scribbled a piano accompaniment, and it took so well that, by the end of the month, M. Vernet, driven nearly mad by its reiteration, said:

“Look here, Berlioz. Next time you go up to the mountains don’t evolve any more songs; your Captive is making life in the Villa impossible. I can’t go a yard without hearing it sung or snored or growled. It is simply distracting! I am going to discharge one of the servants to-day, and I shall only engage another on condition that he does not sing the Captive.”

The only other thing I did was the Resurrexit that I sent as my obligatory work to Paris. The Powers said that I had made great progress. As it was simply a piece of the mass performed at St Roch several years before I got the prize, it does not say much for the judgment of the Immortals!

To Humbert Ferrand.

“January 1832.—Why did you not tell me of your marriage? Of course, I believe, since you say so, that you did not get my letters, but—even so—how could you keep silence?

“Your Noce des Fées is exquisite; so fresh, so full of dainty grace, but I cannot make music to it yet. Orchestration is not sufficiently advanced; I must first educate and dematerialise it, then perhaps I may think of treading in Weber’s footsteps. But here is my idea for an oratorio—the mere carcase, that you must vitalise:

“The height of civilisation, the depth of corruption, under a mighty tyrant, throughout the earth.

“A faithful handful of God’s people, left alive by the tyrant’s contempt, under a prophet, Balthasar, who confronts the ruler and announces the end of the world. The tyrant, in amused scorn, forces him to be present at a travesty of the Last Day, but during its performance, the earth quakes, angels sound gigantic trumpets, the True Christ appears, the Judgment has come.

“That is all. Tell me if the subject appeals to you. Do not attempt detail, it is lost in the Opera House. And, if possible, do not be tied down by the absurd bond of rhyme—use it or not, as seem best.

“I want to leave here in May; if possible, I will get the whole of my pension; if I cannot I must just go on a tour here. I have just finished an important article on the state of music in Italy for the Revue Européenne.

“March.—Many thanks for your confession of colossal idleness. Will you never be cured?

“You have read me a fine homily, but you are entirely out in your conjecture.

“I shall never admire ugliness in art. What I said about rhyme was only to make things easier for you. I could not bear you to waste time and talent over unnecessary difficulties. You know as well as I do that, in hundreds of cases, in verses set to music the rhymes disappear entirely—then why bother about them?

“As for the literary side of the question, I am quite sure it is only custom and education that make you dislike blank verse.

“Just think! Three quarters of Shakespeare is so written, so is Klopstock’s Messiah. Byron used it, and lately I read a translation of Julius Cæsar that ran perfectly, although you had prepared me to be utterly shocked.

“So my subject appeals to you? It is new, grand and fertile, so imagine into it all that you like. As far as the music is concerned I am exploring a virgin Brazilian forest and great are the treasures I hope to find.”