XX NAPLES—HOME

Again did that wretched malady—call it moral, nervous, imaginary, what you will, I call it spleen—which is really the fever of loneliness, seize upon me.

I had first felt it at La Côte Saint-André, when I was sixteen. One lovely May morning I was sitting in a meadow, under the shade of a spreading oak, reading Montjoie’s Manuscript found at Posilippo. Engrossed in my story, I only gradually became aware of sweet and plaintive songs trembling in the breeze. It was the Rogation procession; in the old time-honoured way, that has always seemed to me most poetical and touching, the peasants were going round the fields, praying for the blessing of heaven on their crops. I watched them kneel before a green-wreathed wooden cross, while the priest blessed the land, then they passed on, and the sweet voices died in the distance.

Silence—the gentle rustling of the flowering wheat, the faint cry of the quail to his mate, a dead leaf floating from an oak, the deep throbbing of my own heart. Life seemed so very far away!

On the horizon the Alpine glaciers shone in the rising sun. Here was Meylan; far over those mountains lay Italy, Naples, Posilippo—the whole world of my story. Oh! for the wings of a dove, to leave this clogging earth-bound body! Oh! for life at its highest and best; for love, for rapture, for ecstasy; for the clinging clasp of hot embraces! Love! glory! where is my bright particular star, O my heart? my Stella Montis? Gone for ever?

Then came the crisis with crushing force. I suffered horribly, rolling on the earth, spreading wide my empty arms, tearing up handfuls of grass and daisies—that opened wide their innocent eyes—as I fought my awful sense of oppression and desolation and bereavement.

Yet what was all this compared to the agony I have suffered since, to the torment of my soul that increases daily?

I never thought of death; suicide had no place in my mind. I wanted life, life in its fullest capacity of love and joy and happiness—furious and all-devouring—life that would use to the uttermost my superabundant energies.

That is not spleen. Spleen follows upon it; it is the mental, moral and physical exhaustion that is the inevitable sequence to such a crisis.

One day as I slept, worn out by this reaction, in the laurel wood of the Villa, rolled up like a hedgehog in a heap of dry leaves, two of my comrades woke me.

“Now then, Silenus, get up and come to Naples. We’re off.”

“Off to the devil! You know I have no money.”

“Idiot! Can’t we lend you some? Come, Dantan, help me to heave him up or we shall get no sense out of him. There you are! Brush him down a bit. Now be off and get a month’s leave from Monsieur Horace.”

And I went.

What shall I say of Naples? Clear bright sky, fecund earth, dazzling sunlight!

So many have described this lovely land that I need not do it again. I wandered in the grounds of the Villa Reale, pondering on the woes of Tasso, and rowed to Nisita to watch the sun go down behind Capo Miseno to the accompaniment of the thousand minor chords of the rippling sea. As I stood, a soldier, who spoke very fair French, came up and offered to show me the curiosities of the island. I accepted gratefully, and after an hour’s stroll together I took out my purse. Drawing back, he put my hand aside, saying:

“Monsieur, I want nothing. I ask nothing but—but—that you will pray God for me.”

“Indeed I will,” I said; “it’s an odd notion, but I will do it.”

And that night I seriously did say a Paternoster for him after I got to bed. I was beginning a second when I went into fits of laughter. So I am afraid that, as far as my intervention is concerned, the poor man is still a plain sergeant.

Next day the wind had freshened, and our passage back was stormy. However, we landed at last, and my sailors, overjoyed at the thirty francs I had promised them, insisted on my dining with them. They were such ruffianly-looking creatures that, when they led me through a lonely poplar wood, I began to doubt them, poor lazzaroni! However, we soon came to a cottage where my amphitryons gave orders for the feast—a mountain of macaroni, into which I plunged my hand with them; a great pot of Posilippo wine, from which we drank in turn—I after a toothless old man, the eldest of the family, for, with these good fellows, respect for age comes before even courtesy to guests.

Then the old man began discussing politics, and talking of King Joachim, who was very near his heart, until he got so deeply affected that, to turn his thoughts, his children made him tell me of a long and dangerous voyage he had once made when, after three days and two nights at sea, he had been thrown on a far-off island which the aborigines called Elba, and where it was rumoured Napoleon had once been kept prisoner. Of course I sympathised, and congratulated the old man on his wonderful escape.

The young men were greatly delighted at my interest and attention; they whispered together, there was a mysterious hurrying to and fro, and I gathered that some surprise was in store.

As I rose to leave, the tallest of the lazzaroni, with shy politeness, begged me to accept a present, the best they had to offer, calculated to make the most callous of men weep.

It was a gigantic—onion! which I received with modest dignity worthy of the occasion, and which I carried off in triumph, after a thousand vows of eternal friendship.

That night I went to San Carlo, and, for the first time, heard music in Italy. It was at least meritorious, though the noise made by the conductor tapping his desk bothered me greatly. I was assured, however, that without this support, the musicians could not possibly keep in time!

The musical attractions of Naples could not rival those of the surrounding country, so I passed most of my time in exploring until one day, breakfasting at Castellamare with Munier, the marine painter, whom we had christened Neptune, he said:

“What shall we do? I am sick of Naples. Don’t let us go back.”

“Shall we go to Sicily?”

“By all means. Give me time to finish a study I have begun, and I can catch the five o’clock boat.”

“All right. Let’s see how much money we have.”

Upon investigation there turned out to be enough to take us to Palermo, but for coming back we should have had to trust to Providence, as the monks say. So we separated, he to paint the sea, I to walk back to Rome over the mountains, in company with two Swedish officers whom I knew.

Thus by way of Isola di Sora, Alatri, Subiaco, and Tivoli, and with but few adventures we got back to the Eternal City, and my life of stagnation began once more.

I dreamed of Paris, finished my monodrama, and revised the Symphonie Fantastique, then, considering that the time had come to have them performed, I obtained M. Vernet’s permission to go back to France before my two years expired. I sat for my portrait, took a last trip to Tivoli, Albano, and Palestrina; sold my gun, broke my guitar, wrote in several albums, gave a punch-party to my fellow-students, spent a lot of time stroking M. Vernet’s two dogs—faithful companions of my shooting excursions—had an attack of profound sorrow at the thought that I might see this poetic land no more; climbed into a wretched old chaise, and then—good-bye to Rome!

I went by Florence, Milan, and Turin, and at last, on the 12th May 1832, coming down the slopes of Mont Cenis, I beheld at my feet that smiling Grésivaudan valley, where my happiest hours and brightest dreams of childhood had passed. There was St Eynard, there the house where shone my Stella Montis; there, through the shimmering blue haze, my grandfather’s place bade me welcome. Surely Italy had naught to show as lovely as this! Yet what is this strange oppression on my heart? Afar I hear the dull and ominous murmur of Paris commanding my presence.

To Ferdinand Hiller.

“Florence, May 1832.—I arrived yesterday, and found your letter. Why do you not say whether the sale of my medal realised enough to pay the two hundred francs I owe you?

“I left Rome without regret. The Academy life had grown intolerable, and I spent all my evenings with the Director’s family, who have been most kind. Mademoiselle Vernet is prettier, and her father younger than ever.

“I am glad to be here, yet my sensations are so curiously confused that I cannot explain them even to myself. I know no one, have no adventures, am utterly alone. Perhaps that is what affects me so oddly. I seem to be not myself but some stranger—some Russian or Englishman—sauntering along the Lung ‘Arno. Berlioz is merely a distant acquaintance.

“This cursed throat of mine is still troublesome; it would be the death of me if I would allow it.

“I shall not be in Paris till November or December, as I go straight home from here. Many thanks for your invitation to Frankfort; sooner or later I mean to accept it.”

To Madame Horace Vernet.

“La Côte St André, July 1832.—You have set me, Madame, a new and most agreeable task.

“An intellectual woman not only desires that I should write her my musings, but undertakes to read them without emphasizing too much their ridiculous side.

“It is hardly generous of me to take advantage of your kindness, but are we not all selfish?

“For my part, I must own that whenever such a temptation comes I shall fall into it with the utmost alacrity.

“I should have done so sooner had I not, on my descent from the Alps, been caught like a ball on the bound and tossed from villa to villa round Grenoble.

“My fear was that, on returning to France, I might have to parody Voltaire and say: ‘The more I see of other lands, the less I love my country.’ But all the glories of the glorious kingdom of Naples are powerless beside the ineffable charms of my beautiful vale of the Isère.

“Of society, however, I cannot say the same. The advantage is entirely with the absent, who are not ‘always wrong’ in spite of the proverb.

“Despite my herculean efforts to turn the conversation, the good folks here will insist on talking art, music and poetry to me, and you may imagine how provincials talk! They have most weird notions, theories and ideas that make an artist’s blood curdle in his veins, and, withal, the calmest assumption of infallibility.

“One would think to hear them talk of Byron, Goethe, Beethoven, that they were respectable bootmakers or tailors, with a little more talent than their compeers.

“Nothing is good enough, there is no reverence, no respect, no enthusiasm!

“Thus living in a crowd, I am utterly, cruelly alone and am parched for want of music.

“No longer can I look forward to my evening’s pleasure with Mademoiselle Louise and her piano; no more can I try her sweet patience by demanding and re-demanding those sublime adagios.

“You smile, Madame? No doubt you murmur that I know neither what I want nor where I would be—that I am, in fact, half demented.

“My father devised a charming cure for my malady; he said I ought to marry and forthwith unearthed a rich damsel, informing me that, since he could leave me but little, it was my duty to marry money.

“At first I laughed, but finding that he was in sober earnest, I was obliged to say firmly that, since I could not love the lady in question, I would not sell myself at any price.

“That ended the discussion, but it upset me terribly, for I thought my father knew me better.

“Madame, do you not think I am right?

“As I promised Monsieur Horace, I will go to Paris at the end of the year to fire my musical broadside, after which I intend to start at once for Berlin.

“But indeed, Madame, I am taking unmerciful advantage of your kindness and will conclude by asking your pardon for my garrulity.

To Ferdinand Hiller.

“La Côte St André, August 1832.—What a dainty, elusive, piquant, teasing, witty creature is this Hiller! Were we both women, I should detest her; were she, alone, a woman I should simply hate her, for I loathe coquettes. As it is—‘Providence having ordered all for the best’ as the good say—we are luckily both masculine.

“No, my dear fellow, you, being you, naturally ‘could not do otherwise’ than make me wait two months for your letter; naturally, also, I ‘could not do otherwise’ than be angry with you therefor. However, as I was not wounded to the quick by your neglect, I wrote you a second letter which I burnt, remembering Napoleon’s wise saying, ‘Certain things should never be said.’ If so, still less should they be written.

“Come now! Since you are learning Latin I will turn schoolmaster.

“There are mistakes in your letter.

“No. 1. No accent on negre.

“No. 2. De grands amusements, not des.

“No. 3. Il est possible que Mendelssohn L’AIT, not l’aura.

“Take thou good heed unto my lesson. Ouf!

“I am in the bosom of my family, by whom (particularly by my younger sister) I allow myself to be adored in an edifying manner. But oh! I long for liberty and love and money! They will come some day and perhaps also one little luxury—one of those superfluities that are necessities to certain temperaments—revenge, public and private. One only lives and dies once.

“I spend my time in copying my Mélologue; I have been two months at it hard and have still sixty-two days’ work. Am I not persevering? I am ill for want of music, positively paralysed; then I still suffer from that choleraic trouble that sometimes keeps me in bed. However, I am up to-day, getting ready for the next attack.

“I am going to see Ferrand; we have not met for five years. You see extremes meet. He is more religious than ever and has married a woman who adores him and whom he adores.