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 Charles Gounod -.autobiographical re minis 
 
 1924 022 327 377 
 
The original of this book is in 
 the Cornell University Library. 
 
 There are no known copyright restrictions in 
 the United States on the use of the text. 
 
 http://www.archive.org/details/cu31924022327377 
 
CHARLES GOUNOD 
 
. , .• , , . 
 
CHARLES GOUNOD 
 
 AUTOBIOGRAPHICAL REMINISCENCES 
 
 WITH FAMILY LETTERS AND 
 
 NOTES ON MUSIC 
 
 FROM THE FRENCH BY 
 
 THE HON. W. HELY HUTCHINSON 
 
 LONDON 
 
 WILLIAM HEINEMANN 
 
 1896 
 
 [All rights reserved] 
 
Printed by Ballantvne, Hanson & Co, 
 At the Ballantyne Press 
 
CONTENTS 
 
 Charles Gounod — 
 
 PAGE 
 
 I. CHILDHOOD I 
 
 II. ITALY 54 
 
 iii. germany iio 
 
 iv. home again 127 
 
 Later Letters of Charles Gounod . . . 173 
 
 Berlioz . . 195 
 
 M. Camille Saint - Saens and his Opera 
 
 "Henri VIII." 209 
 
 Nature and Art 225 
 
 The Academy of France at Rome . . . 239 
 
 The Artist and Modern Society . . . 253 
 
INTRODUCTION 
 
 The following pages contain the story of the 
 most important events of my artistic life, of the 
 mark left by them on my personal existence, oj 
 tkeir influence on my career, and of the thoughts 
 they have suggested to my mind. 
 
 I do not desire to make any capital out of what- 
 ever public interest may attach to my own person. 
 But I believe the clear and simple narrative oj 
 an artist's life may often convey useful informa- 
 tion, hidden under a word or fact of no apparent 
 importance, but which tallies exactly with the 
 humour or the need of some particular moment. 
 
 An everyday occurrence, a hastily spoken word, 
 often holds its own opportunity. 
 
 Experience teaches ; and that which has been 
 useful and salutary to me may perchance serve 
 others too. 
 
 The Author of his own Memoirs must perforce 
 speak frequently, nay constantly, about himself. 
 It has been my endeavour in this book to do so 
 
 vii fr 
 
viii INTRODUCTION 
 
 with absolute impartiality. I can lay claim to 
 scrupulous exactness both in detailing facts and 
 in reporting the remarks of others. I have given 
 my candid opinion of my own work, but the fable 
 tells us the owl misjudged her own offspring, and 
 1 may well be mistaken in mine. 
 
 Should Posterity deem me worth remembering 
 at all, it will judge whether my estimate of myself 
 is a correct one. I can trust Time to allot me, 
 like every other man, my proper 'place, or to 
 cast me down if I have been unduly exalted 
 heretofore. 
 
 My story bears witness to my love and vene- 
 ration for the being who bestows more love than 
 any other earthly creature — my mother I Mater- 
 nity is the most perfect reflection of the great 
 Providence ; the purest, warmest ray He casts 
 on earthly life; its inexhaustible solicitude is 
 the direct effluence of Gods eternal care for His 
 own creatures. 
 
 If I have worked any good, by word or deed, 
 during my life, I owe it to my mother, and to her 
 I give the praise. She nursed me, she brought 
 me up, she formed me ; not in her own image, 
 alas ! — that would have been too fair. But the 
 
INTRODUCTION ix 
 
 fault of what is lacking lies with me, and not 
 with her. 
 
 She sleeps beneath a stone as simple as her 
 blameless life had been. May this tribute from 
 the son she loved so tenderly form a more im- 
 perishable crown than the wreaths of fading 
 immortelles he laid upon her grave, and clothe 
 her memory with a halo of reverence and respect 
 he fain would have endure long after he himself 
 is dead and gone. 
 
CHARLES GOUNOD 
 I 
 
 CHILDHOOD 
 
 My mother, whose maiden name was Victoire 
 Lemachois, was born at Rouen on the 4th 
 of June 1780. Her father was a member of 
 the French magistracy. Her mother, a Mdlle. 
 Heuzey, was a lady of remarkable intelligence 
 and marvellous artistic aptitude. She was a 
 musician, and a poetess as well. She com- 
 posed, sang, and played on the harp ; and, as 
 I have often heard my mother say, she could 
 act tragedy like Mdlle. Duchesnois, or comedy 
 like Mdlle. Mars. 
 
 Attracted by such an uncommon combination 
 of exceptional natural talent, the best families 
 in the neighbourhood — the D'Houdetots, the De 
 Mortemarts, the Saint Lamberts, and the D'Her- 
 bouvilles — continually sought her, and literally 
 made her their spoilt child. 
 
z CHARLES GOUNOD 
 
 But, alas ! those talents which give life its 
 greatest charm and seduction do not always en- 
 sure its happiness. Total disparity of tastes, 
 of inclinations, and of instincts seldom conduce 
 to domestic peace, and it is dangerous to dream 
 of trying to govern real life by ideal rules of 
 conduct. The Angel of Peace soon spread her 
 wings and deserted the household where so many 
 influences combined to make her stay impossible, 
 and my mother's childhood suffered from the 
 inevitable and painful consequences. Her life 
 was saddened, perforce, at an age when she and 
 sorrow should have been strangers. 
 
 But God had endowed her with a strong heart, 
 a sound judgment, and indomitable courage. Be- 
 reft of a mother's watchful care, actually obliged 
 to teach herself how to read and write, she also 
 learnt, alone and unassisted, the rudiments of 
 music and drawing, arts by which she was ere 
 long to earn her living. 
 
 During the turmoil of the Revolution my 
 grandfather lost his judicial post at Rouen. My 
 mother's one idea was to get work, so as to be 
 useful to him. She looked out for piano pupils, 
 found a few, and thus, at eleven years of age, 
 she began that toilsome life which in after years, 
 
CHILDHOOD 3 
 
 during her widowhood, was to enable her to 
 bring up and educate her children. 
 
 Spurred by her constant desire to improve, 
 and by a sense of duty which was the dominant 
 feature of her whole life, she realised that a good 
 teacher must acquire everything that is likely 
 to add weight and authority to her instructions. 
 She resolved, therefore, to place herself under 
 the care of some well-known master, to learn all 
 that was necessary to ensure her own credit and 
 satisfy her conscience. To this end, little by 
 little — penny by penny, even — she laid by part 
 of the miserable income which her music lessons 
 brought in, and when a sufficient sum had been 
 accumulated she took the coach, which in those 
 days did the journey from Rouen to Paris in 
 three days. On her arrival in Paris she went 
 straight to Adam, the professor of pianoforte- 
 playing at the Conservatoire, father of Adolphe 
 Adam, the author of " Le Chalet " and many 
 other charming works. 
 
 Adam received her kindly, and listened to her 
 attentively. He at once recognised her posses- 
 sion of those qualities which were to foster and 
 strengthen the interest primarily aroused by her 
 happy facility for her art. 
 
4 CHARLES GOUNOD 
 
 As my mother's youth forbade her residing 
 permanently in Paris, to benefit by a regular 
 and consecutive course of instruction, it was 
 arranged she should travel up from Rouen once 
 in every three months and take a lesson. 
 
 One lesson every three months ! A short 
 allowance indeed ! and one which could hardly 
 have seemed likely to repay the cost involved. 
 But certain individuals are living proofs of the 
 miracle of the loaves and fishes, and this narra- 
 tive will show, by many another example, that 
 my mother was one of them. 
 
 A person destined later on to enjoy such solid 
 and well-earned renown as a teacher of music 
 was not, could not be, in fact, a pupil capable of 
 forgetting the smallest item of her master's rare 
 and invaluable lessons. Adam was himself greatly 
 struck by the improvement apparent between each 
 sdance and the next. As much to mark his ap- 
 preciation of his young pupil's personal courage, 
 as of her musical talent, he contrived to get a 
 piano lent her gratis. This allowed of her study- 
 ing assiduously Without bearing the burden entailed 
 on mind and purse of paying for her instrument, 
 which, small as it was, had been a heavy tax upon 
 her small resources. 
 
CHILDHOOD 5 
 
 Soon after this a circumstance occurred which 
 had a decisive influence on my mother's whole 
 future life. 
 
 The fashionable pianoforte composers at that 
 time were Clementi, Steibelt, Dussek, and some 
 others. I do not mention Mozart, who had 
 already blazed out upon the musical world, fol- 
 lowing closely upon Haydn ; nor do I refer to 
 the great Sebastian Bach, whose immortal collec- 
 tion of preludes and fugues, " Das Wohltemporirte 
 Clavier," published a century ago, has given the 
 law to pianoforte study, and become the un- 
 questioned text-book of musical composition. 
 Beethoven, still a young man, had not yet 
 reached the pinnacle of fame on which his 
 mighty works have now placed him. 
 
 About this period a German musician, named 
 Hullmandel, a violinist of great merit, and a 
 contemporary and friend of Beethoven's, came 
 and settled in France, with a view to making a 
 connection as an accompanist. He stayed some 
 time at Rouen, and while there expressed a 
 wish to hear the performances of those local 
 young ladies who were considered to have the 
 greatest musical talent. A sort of competition 
 was organised, in which my mother took part. 
 
6 CHARLES GOUNOD 
 
 She had the good fortune of being particularly- 
 noticed and complimented by Hullmandel, who 
 at once fixed on her as a fit person to receive 
 lessons from him, and to perform with him at 
 certain houses in the town where music was 
 carefully and even passionately cultivated. 
 
 Here ends all I have to tell about my mother's 
 childhood and youth. I know no further details 
 of her life until her marriage, which took place 
 in 1806. She was then twenty-six years and 
 a half old. 
 
 My father, Francois Louis Gounod, was born 
 in 1758, and was therefore slightly over forty- 
 seven years of age at the time of his marriage. 
 He was a painter of distinguished merit, and my 
 mother has often told me that great contem- 
 porary artists, such as Gerard, Girodet, Guerin, 
 Joseph Vernet, and Gros, considered him the best 
 draughtsman of his day. 
 
 I remember a story about Gerard, which my 
 mother used to tell with pardonable pride. 
 Covered as he was with honour and glory, a 
 Baron of the Empire, owning an enormous for- 
 tune, the famous artist was noted for the smart- 
 ness of his carriages. While driving about one 
 
CHILDHOOD 7 
 
 day, he happened to meet my father, who was 
 walking. " What ! " he cried, " Gounod on foot ! 
 and I in a carriage ! What a shame ! " 
 
 My father had studied under Lepici6 with 
 Carle Vernet (the son of Joseph and father of 
 Horace of that ilk). Twice over he competed 
 for the Grand Prix de Rome. His scrupulous 
 conscientiousness and artistic modesty are best 
 reflected by the following little incident which 
 occurred during his youth. The subject given 
 for the "Grand Prix" competition on one of the 
 occasions mentioned above was " The Woman 
 taken in Adultery." Among the competitors 
 were my father and the painter Drouais, whose 
 remarkable picture gained him the Grand Prix. 
 When Drouais showed him his canvas, my father 
 told him frankly there could be no possible com- 
 parison between it and his own ; and, once back 
 in his studio, he destroyed his own work, which 
 did not seem to him worthy to hang beside his 
 comrade's masterpiece. This fact will give some 
 idea of his artistic integrity, which never wavered 
 between the call of justice and that of personal 
 interest. 
 
 Highly educated, with a mind as refined as 
 nature and study could make it, my father 
 
8 CHARLES GOUNOD 
 
 throughout his whole life shrank instinctively 
 from undertaking any work of great magnitude. 
 The lack of robust health may partly explain this 
 peculiarity in a man of such great powers ; per- 
 haps, too, the cause may be discovered in his 
 strong tendency towards absolute freedom and 
 independence of thought. Either circumstance 
 may explain his dislike to undertaking anything 
 likely to absorb all his time and strength. The 
 following anecdote gives colour to this view. 
 
 Monsieur Denon, at that time Curator of the 
 Louvre Museum, and also, I believe, Superinten- 
 dent of the Royal Museums of France, was an 
 intimate friend of my father's, and had, besides, 
 the highest opinion of his talent as a draughts- 
 man and etcher. One day he invited him to exe- 
 cute a number of etchings of the drawings form- 
 ing the collection known as the " Cabinet des 
 Medailles," with an annual fee of 10,000 francs 
 during the period covered by the work. Such 
 an offer meant affluence to a needy household 
 like ours, in those days especially. The sum 
 would have provided ample support for husband, 
 wife, and two children. Well ! my father re- 
 fused point-blank. He would only undertake to 
 do a few specially ordered portraits and litho- 
 
CHILDHOOD 9 
 
 graphs, some of which are of the highest artistic 
 value, and carefully treasured by the descendants 
 of those for whom they were originally executed. 
 
 Indeed, my mother's unconquerable energy had 
 to assert itself often before these very portraits, 
 with their delicate sense of perception and unerr- 
 ing talent of execution, could leave the studio. 
 How many would even now have remained un- 
 finished, had she not taken them in hand herself? 
 How many times had she to set and clean the 
 palettes with her own hands ? And this was but 
 a fraction of her task. As long as his artistic 
 interest was awake ; — while the human side of 
 his model — the attitude, the expression, the 
 glance, the look, the Soul in fact — claimed his 
 attention, — my father's work went merrily. But 
 when it came to small accessories, such as cuffs 
 and ornaments, embroideries and decorations, 
 ah ! then his interest failed him, and his patience 
 too. So the poor wife took up the brush, cheer- 
 fully slaving at the dull details, and by dint of in- 
 telligence and courage finished the work' begun 
 with such enthusiasm and talent, and dropped 
 from instinctive dread of being bored. 
 
 Happily my father had been induced to hold 
 a regular drawing-class in his own house. This, 
 
io CHARLES GOUNOD 
 
 with what he made by painting, brought us in 
 enough to live on, and indirectly, as will be 
 apparent later, became the starting-point of my 
 mother's career as a pianoforte teacher. 
 
 So the modest household lived on, till my 
 father was carried off by congestion of the lungs 
 on the 4th of May 1823. He was sixty-four 
 years old, and left his widow with two boys — my 
 elder brother, aged fifteen and a half, and myself, 
 who would be five years old on the 17th of the 
 following June. 
 
 My father, when he left this world, left us with- 
 out a bread-winner. I will now proceed to show 
 how my mother, by dint of her wonderful energy 
 and unequalled tenderness, supplied in "over- 
 flowing measure " that protection and support of 
 which his death had robbed us. 
 
 In those days there lived, on the Quai Voltaire, 
 a lithographer of the name of Delpech. It is 
 not so very long since his name disappeared from 
 the shop-front of the house he used to occupy. 
 My father had not been dead many hours before 
 my mother went to him. 
 
 "Delpech,'' she said, "my husband is dead. 
 1 am left alone with two boys to feed and educate. 
 From this out I must be their mother and their 
 
CHILDHOOD ii 
 
 father as well. I mean to work for them. I have 
 come to ask you two things — first, how to sharpen 
 a lithographer's style ; second, how to prepare the 
 stones. . . . Leave the rest to me ; only I beg of 
 you to get me work." 
 
 My mother's first care was to publish the fact 
 that, if the parents of pupils at the drawing-class 
 would continue their patronage, there would be 
 no interruption in the regular course of lessons. 
 
 The immediate and unanimous response amply 
 proved the public appreciation of the courage 
 shown by the noble-hearted woman, who, instead 
 of letting her grief overwhelm and absorb her, 
 had instantly risen to the necessity of providing 
 for her fatherless children. The drawing-class 
 was continued, therefore, and a number of new 
 pupils were soon added to the attendance. But 
 my mother, being already known to be a good 
 musician as well as a clever draughtswoman, it 
 came about that many parents begged her to 
 instruct their daughters in the former art. 
 
 She did not hesitate to grasp at this fresh source 
 of income to our little household, and for some 
 time music and drawing were taught side by side 
 within our walls ; but at length it became neces- 
 sary to relinquish either one or the other. It 
 
i2 CHARLES GOUNOD 
 
 would have been bad policy on her part to try to 
 do more than physical endurance would permit, 
 and, in the event, my mother decided to devote 
 herself to music. 
 
 I was so young when my father died, that my 
 recollection of him is very indistinct. I can only 
 recall three or four memories of him with any 
 degree of certainty, but they are as clear as those 
 of yesterday. The tears rise to my eyes as I 
 commit them to this paper. 
 
 One impression indelibly stamped upon my 
 brain is that of seeing him sitting with his legs 
 crossed (his customary attitude) by the chimney 
 corner, absorbed in reading, spectacles on nose, 
 dressed in a white striped jacket and loose trou- 
 sers, and a cotton cap similar to those worn by 
 many painters of his day. I have seen the 
 same cap, many years since then, on the head 
 of Monsieur Ingres, Director of the Academie 
 de France at Rome — my illustrious, and, I regret 
 to say, departed friend. 
 
 As a rule, while my father was thus absorbed 
 in his book, I would be sprawling flat in the 
 middle of the room, drawing with a white chalk 
 on a black varnished board, my subjects being 
 
CHILDHOOD 13 
 
 eyes, noses, and mouths of which my father had 
 drawn me models. I can see it all now, as if it 
 were yesterday, although I could not have been 
 more than four or four and a half. I was so fond 
 of this employment, I recollect, that had my father 
 lived, I make no doubt I should have desired to be 
 a painter rather than a musician ; but my mother's 
 profession, and the education she gave me during 
 my early youth, turned the scale for music. 
 
 Shortly after my father's death, which took 
 place in the house which bore, and still bears, 
 the number 1 1 in the Place St. Andr^-des-Arts 
 (or rather " des Arcs "), my mother took another, 
 not very far away from our old home. Our new 
 abode was at 20 Rue des Grands Augustins. 
 It is from that flitting that I can date my first 
 real musical impressions. 
 
 My mother, who nursed me herself, had cer- 
 tainly given me music with her milk. She 
 always sang while she was nursing me, and I 
 can faithfully say I took my first lessons uncon- 
 sciously, and without being sensible of the neces- 
 sity so irksome to any child, and so difficult to 
 impress on him, of fixing my attention on the 
 instruction I was receiving. I had acquired a 
 very clear idea of the various intonations, of the 
 
14 CHARLES GOUNOD 
 
 musical intervals they represent, and of the ele- 
 mentary forms of modulation. Even before I 
 knew how to use my tongue, my ear appreciated 
 the difference between the major and the minor 
 key. They tell me that hearing some one in the 
 street — some beggar, doubtless — singing a song 
 in a minor key, I asked my mother why he sang 
 "as if he were crying." 
 
 Thus my ear was thoroughly practised, and 
 I easily held my place, even at that early age, 
 in a Solfeggio class. I might have acted as its 
 teacher. 
 
 Proud that her little boy should be more than 
 a match for grown-up girls, especially as it was all 
 thanks to her, my mother could not resist the 
 natural temptation to showing off her little pupil 
 before some eminent musical personage. 
 
 In those days there was a musician of the name 
 of Jadin, whose son and grandson both made 
 themselves an honoured name among contem- 
 porary painters. Jadin himself was well known 
 as a composer of romances, very popular in their 
 day. He was, if I am not mistaken, accompanist 
 at the well-known Choron School of Religious 
 Music. 
 
CHILDHOOD i 5 
 
 My mother wrote and asked him to come and 
 pass judgment on my musical abilities. 
 
 Jadin came — put me in the corner of the room, 
 with my face to the wall (I see that corner now), 
 and sitting down to the piano, improvised a suc- 
 cession of chords and modulations. At each 
 change he would ask, " What key am I playing 
 in ? " and I never made a single mistake in all 
 my answers. 
 
 He was amazed, and my mother was triumphant. 
 My poor dear mother ! Little she thought that 
 she herself was fostering the birth of a resolve, in 
 her boy's mind, which was some years later to 
 cause her sore uneasiness as to his future. Nor 
 did she dream, when she took me, a six-year-old 
 boy, to the Odeon to hear " Robin Hood," that 
 she had stirred my first impulse towards the art 
 that was to govern all my life. 
 
 My readers will have wondered at my saying 
 nothing so far about my brother. I must explain 
 that I cannot recall any memory of him till after 
 I had passed my sixth birthday ; prior to that 
 time I remember nothing of him. 
 
 My brother, Louis Urbain Gounod, was ten 
 and a half years older than myself, he having been 
 born on December 13, 1807. 
 
1 6 CHARLES GOUNOD 
 
 When he was about twelve he entered the 
 Lycee at Versailles, where he remained till he 
 was eighteen. My first recollections of that best 
 of brothers are connected with my memories of 
 Versailles. Alas ! I lost him just when I was be- 
 ginning to appreciate the value of his fraternal 
 friendship. 
 
 Louis XVIII. had appointed my father Pro- 
 fessor of Drawing to the Royal Pages, and having 
 a strong personal regard for him, he had granted 
 us permission, during our temporary residence at 
 Versailles, to occupy rooms in the huge building 
 known as No. 6 Rue de la Surintendance, which 
 runs from the Place du Chateau to the Rue de 
 l'Orangerie. 
 
 Our apartment, which I remember well, and 
 which could only be reached by a number of most 
 confusing staircases, looked out over the "Piece 
 d'Eau des Suisses " and the big wood of Satory. 
 A corridor ran outside all our rooms, and looked 
 to me quite endless. It led to a suite of rooms 
 occupied by the Beaumont family. One of this 
 family, Edouard Beaumont, was one of my earliest 
 friends. He ultimately became a distinguished 
 painter. Edouard 's father was a sculptor, his 
 duties at that time being to restore the various 
 
CHILDHOOD 17 
 
 statues in the chateau and park at Versailles, 
 which duties carried with them the right of occu- 
 pying the rooms next ours. 
 
 When my father died in 1823, my mother was 
 still allowed to live in these rooms during the 
 annual holidays. This permission was extended 
 to her during the reign of Charles X., that is, up 
 to 1830, but was withdrawn on the accession of 
 Louis-Philippe. My brother, who, as I said above, 
 was a student at the Lycee at Versailles, always 
 spent his holidays with us there. 
 
 An old musician named Rousseau was then 
 chapel-master of the Palace Chapel at Versailles. 
 His particular instrument was the 'cello (the 
 " bass," as it was called in those days), and my 
 mother persuaded him to give my brother lessons. 
 The latter had a beautiful voice, and often sang 
 in the services at the Royal Chapel. 
 
 I really cannot tell whether old Pere Rousseau 
 played upon his violoncello well or ill ; what I do 
 clearly remember is that my brother was no pro- 
 ficient on the instrument. But I was young, and 
 my small mind could not grasp the fact that play- 
 ing out of tune was possible ; I thought when 
 an instrument was put into a person's hands, he 
 
18 CHARLES GOUNOD 
 
 must produce pure tone. I had no conception of 
 what the word beginner meant. 
 
 Once I was listening to my brother practising 
 in the next room. My ear was getting very sore 
 from the continual discords, so, in all innocence, 
 I asked my mother, "Why is Urbain's violoncello 
 so fearfully out of tune ? " I do not remember 
 what she answered, but I am sure she laughed 
 over my simple question. 
 
 I mentioned that my brother had a beautiful 
 voice. I was able to judge it later on by my own 
 ears. And I can also quote another testimony, 
 that of Wartel, who often sang with him in the 
 Chapel -Royal at Versailles. Wartel studied at 
 the Choron School, and sang at the Opera in 
 Nourrit's time ; ultimately he took to teaching, 
 and earned a great and well-deserved reputation 
 in that line. 
 
 In 1825 my mother's health broke down. I 
 was then about seven years old. Our family 
 doctor at that time was Monsieur Baffos ; he 
 had brought me into the world, and had known 
 us all for many years. Our former doctor, 
 Monsieur Halle, had recommended him to us 
 when he himself retired. As my mother's work 
 
CHILDHOOD 19. 
 
 consisted in giving music lessons at her own 
 house all the day long, and as the presence of a 
 child of my age was a source of anxiety and even 
 worry to her, Baffos suggested my spending the 
 day at a boarding-school, whence I was fetched 
 back every evening at dinner-time. The school 
 selected was kept by a certain Monsieur Boniface 
 in the Rue de Touraine, close to the Ecole de 
 Medecine, and not far from our home in the Rue 
 des Grands Augustins. Its quarters were soon 
 shifted to the Rue de Conde, nearly opposite 
 the Odeon. 
 
 There I first met Duprez, destined to become 
 the celebrated tenor, who shone so brilliantly on 
 the Opera boards. 
 
 Duprez, nine years older than myself, must 
 have been about sixteen or seventeen at the time 
 I speak of. He was a pupil of Choron's, and 
 taught Solfeggio in Monsieur Boniface's school. 
 He soon took a fancy to me when he found I 
 could read a musical score with the same ease as 
 a printed book — much better indeed, I make no 
 doubt, than I can do it now. He used to take 
 me on his knee, and when one of my little 
 comrades made a mistake, would say, "Come, 
 little man, show them how to do it!" 
 
zo CHARLES GOUNOD 
 
 Years afterwards I reminded him of this 
 fact, now so far behind us both. It seemed to 
 come back to him suddenly and he cried, 
 " What ! were you the small boy who solfa-ed 
 so well?" 
 
 But it was growing high time for me to set 
 about my education after a more serious and 
 systematic fashion. Monsieur Boniface's estab- 
 lishment was really more of a day nursery than 
 a school. 
 
 So I was entered as a boarder at Monsieur 
 Letellier's institution in the Rue de Vaugirard, 
 at the corner of the Rue Ferou. Monsieur 
 Letellier soon retired, and was succeeded by 
 Monsieur de Reusse. I remained there for a 
 year, and was then removed to the school of 
 Monsieur H allays- Dabot, in the Place de l'Estra- 
 pade, close to the Pantheon. 
 
 My recollection of Monsieur Hallays-Dabot 
 and his wife is as clear and distinct as though 
 they were present here. Nothing could exceed 
 the warm-hearted kindness of my reception in 
 their house. It sufficed to dispel my horror of a 
 system from which I had an instinctive shirking. 
 The almost paternal care they gave me quite 
 
CHILDHOOD 2i 
 
 destroyed this feeling, and allayed the doubts I 
 had entertained as to the possibility of being 
 happy in a boarding-school. 
 
 The two years I spent in his house were, in 
 fact, two of the happiest in my life; his even- 
 handed justice and his kindly affection never 
 failed. 
 
 When I reached the age of eleven it was de- 
 cided that my education should be continued at 
 the Lycee St. Louis. When I left Monsieur 
 Hallays-Dabot's care, he gave me a certificate of 
 character so flattering in its terms that I refrain 
 from reproducing it. I have felt it a duty to 
 make this public acknowledgment of all he did 
 for me. 
 
 The good testimonials I brought from Mon- 
 sieur Hallays-Dabot's establishment gained me 
 a quart de bourse at the Lycee St. Louis, 1 which 
 I accordingly entered at the close of the holidays 
 in October 1829. I was then just eleven years 
 old. 
 
 The then Principal of the Lycee was an 
 
 1 Translator's Note. — The system of scholarships in French 
 public schools is quite different from that in vogue with us. In 
 the former country the total value is often split up into fractions 
 and bestowed on a number of students. I do not think this is 
 ever done in England. 
 
22 CHARLES GOUNOD 
 
 ecclesiastic, the Abbe Ganser, a gentle, quiet- 
 natured man much inclined to meditation, and 
 very paternal in his dealings with his pupils. 
 
 I was at once put into what was known as the 
 sixth class. From the outset of my school career 
 I had the good fortune of being under a man 
 who, in the course of the years I studied with him, 
 gained my deepest affection — Adolphe Regnier, 
 Membre de l'lnstitut, my dear and honoured 
 master, formerly the tutor, and still, as I write, 
 the friend of the Comte de Paris. 
 
 I was not stupid, and as a rule my teachers 
 liked me ; but I must confess I was very care- 
 less, and was often punished for inattention, even 
 more so during preparation hours than in the 
 actual school-work. 
 
 I mentioned that I joined St. Louis as a 
 "quarter scholar." This means that my college 
 fees were reduced one-quarter. It was incum- 
 bent on me to endeavour, by diligence and good 
 conduct, to rise to the position of half scholar, 
 three-quarter scholar, and finally to that of full 
 scholar, and so relieve my mother of the expense 
 of keeping me at college. Seeing I adored my 
 mother, and that my greatest joy should therefore 
 have been to help her by my own exertions, this 
 
CHILDHOOD 23 
 
 sacred object ought to have been ever present 
 with me. 
 
 But woe is me! Instincts forcibly repressed 
 are apt to wake again with tenfold fierceness. 
 And so mine did, many a time and often — far too 
 often, alas ! 
 
 One day I had got into a scrape for some piece 
 of carelessness or other, some exercise unfinished, 
 or lesson left unlearnt. I suppose I thought my 
 punishment out of proportion to my crime, for I 
 complained, the sole result being that the penalty 
 was largely increased. I was marched off to the 
 college prison, a sort of dungeon, where I was to 
 be kept on bread and water till I had finished an 
 enormous imposition of I know not how many lines, 
 some five hundred or a thousand, I think — some- 
 thing absurd, I know ! When I found myself 
 under lock and key I began to think I was a 
 brute. The feelings of Orestes when the Furies 
 reproached him with his mother's death were not 
 more bitter than mine when I was given my 
 prison fare ! I looked at the bread, and burst 
 into tears. " Oh ! you scoundrel, you brute, you 
 beast," I cried; "look at the bread your mother 
 earns for you ! Your mother who is coming to 
 see you after school, and will hear you are in 
 
24 CHARLES GOUNOD 
 
 prison, and will go home weeping through the 
 streets, without having seen or kissed you ! 
 Come, come, you are a wretch ; you do not even 
 deserve to have dry bread ! " 
 
 And I put it aside, and went hungry. 
 
 However, in my normal condition I worked 
 on fairly enough, and, thanks to the prizes I won 
 every year, I gradually progressed towards that 
 ardently wished-for goal, a "full scholarship." 
 
 There was a chapel in the Lycee Saint Louis, 
 where musical masses were sung every Sunday. 
 The gallery, which occupied the full width of 
 the chapel, was divided into two parts, and in 
 one of these were the choristers' seats and the 
 organ. When I joined the Lycee, the chapel- 
 master was Hyppolyte Monpou, then accompanist 
 at the Choron School of Music, well known 
 ih later years as the composer of a number of 
 melodies and theatrical works, which brought 
 him some considerable popularity. 
 
 Thanks to the training my mother had given 
 me ever since my babyhood, I could read music 
 at sight ; and my voice was sweet and very true. 
 On entering the college I was at once handed 
 over to Monpou, who was astonished by my 
 
CHILDHOOD 25 
 
 aptness, and forthwith appointed me solo soprano 
 of his little choir, which consisted of two sopranos, 
 two altos, two tenors, and two basses. 
 
 I lost my voice owing to a blunder of Monpou's. 
 He insisted on my singing while it was breaking, 
 although complete silence and rest are indispen- 
 sable while the vocal chords are in their transi- 
 tional stage ; and I never recovered the power 
 and ring and tone I had as a child, and which 
 constitute a really good singing voice. Mine has 
 always been husky ever since. But for this 
 accident, I believe I should have sung well in 
 after life. 
 
 At the Revolution of 1830, the Abbe Ganser 
 ceased to be our Principal. He was succeeded 
 by Monsieur Liez, a former Professor at the 
 Lycee Henri IV., strongly attached to the new 
 regime, and a zealous advocate of the system 
 of military drill forthwith introduced into the 
 various colleges. He used to come and watch 
 us drilling, standing bolt upright like any ser- 
 geant instructor or colonel on parade, and with 
 his right hand thrust into the breast of his coat, 
 like Napoleon I. 
 
 Two years afterwards Monsieur Liez was 
 superseded by Monsieur Poirson. It was while 
 
26 CHARLES GOUNOD 
 
 he was Principal that the various circumstances 
 which decided the ultimate bent of my life took 
 place. 
 
 Among my many faults was one pet sin. I 
 worshipped music ; the first storms that ruffled 
 the surface of my youthful existence origi- 
 nated with the overmastering passion, which 
 had such paramount influence on my ultimate 
 career. 
 
 Anybody who knows anything about a Lycee 
 has heard of the Festival of Saint Charlemagne, 
 so dear to every schoolboy. 
 
 One feature of the festival is a great banquet, 
 to which every student who has gained either 
 one first or two second places in the various 
 competitions during that term is bidden. On 
 this banquet follows a two days' holiday, which 
 gives the boys a chance of "sleeping out" — in 
 other words, of spending a night at home — a rare 
 treat universally coveted. 
 
 The festival fell in mid- winter. In 1831 I had 
 the good luck to be one of the invited guests ; 
 and to reward me, my mother promised I should 
 go in the evening to the Theatre Italien with my 
 brother, to hear Rossini's " Otello." Malibran 
 
CHILDHOOD 27 
 
 played Desdemona ; Rubini, Otello ; and Lab- 
 lache, the Father. 
 
 I was nearly wild with impatience and delight. 
 I remember I could not eat for excitement, so 
 that my mother said to me at dinner, "If you 
 don't eat your dinner I won't let you go to the 
 opera," and forthwith I began to consume my 
 victuals, in a spirit of resignation at all events. 
 
 We had dined early that evening, as we had 
 no reserved seats (this would have been far too 
 costly), and we had to be at the opera house 
 before the doors were opened, with the crowd of 
 people who waited on the chance of finding a 
 couple of places untaken in the pit. Even this 
 was a terrible expense to my poor mother, as the 
 seats cost 3 frs. 75 c. each. 
 
 It was bitterly cold ; for two mortal hours did 
 Urbain and I wait, stamping our frozen toes, for 
 the happy moment when the string of people 
 began to move past the ticket office window. 
 
 We got inside at last. Never shall I forget 
 my first sight of the great theatre, the curtain and 
 the brilliant lights. I felt as if I were in some 
 temple, as if a heavenly vision must shortly rise 
 upon my sight. 
 
 At last the solemn moment came. I heard the 
 
28 CHARLES GOUNOD 
 
 stage-manager's three knocks, and the overture 
 began. My heart was beating like a sledge- 
 hammer. 
 
 Oh, that night ! that night ! what rapture, what 
 Elysium ! Malibran, Rubini, Lablache, Tam- 
 burini (he sang I ago) ; the voices, the orchestra ! 
 I was literally beside myself. 
 
 I left that theatre completely out of tune with 
 the prosaic details of my daily life, and absolutely 
 wedded to the dream which was to be the very 
 atmosphere and fixed ideal of my existence. 
 
 That night I never closed my eyes ; I was 
 haunted, "possessed;" I was wild to write an 
 "Otello" myself! 
 
 I am ashamed to say my work in school be- 
 trayed my state of mind. I scamped my duties 
 in every possible way ; I used to dash off my 
 exercises without making any draft, so as to gain 
 more time to give to musical composition, my 
 favourite occupation — the only one worth atten- 
 tion, as it seemed to me. Many were the tears 
 and heavy the troubles that resulted. One day, 
 the master on duty, seeing me scribbling away 
 on music paper, came and asked for my work. I 
 handed him my fair copy. " And where is your 
 rough draft ? " said he. As I hadn't got one to 
 
CHILDHOOD 29 
 
 show, he snatched my music paper and tore it up. 
 Of course I objected, and got punished for my 
 pains. Another protest, and an appeal to the 
 Principal, only resulted in a repetition of the old 
 story ; I was kept in school, given extra work, 
 imprisoned, &c, &c. 
 
 This first tormenting, far from having its in- 
 tended effect, only inflamed my ardour, and made 
 me resolve to ensure myself free indulgence of 
 my taste by doing my schoolwork thoroughly 
 and regularly. 
 
 Thus things stood when I took the step of 
 drawing up a kind of " profession of faith," where- 
 in I warned my mother of my fixed determination 
 to embrace the artistic career. I had hesitated 
 some time, so I declared, between music and 
 painting ; but I was now convinced that whatever 
 talent I possessed would find its best outlet in 
 the former art, and my decision, I added, was 
 final. 
 
 My poor mother was distracted. She knew 
 too well all an artist's life entails, and probably 
 she shrank from the thought that her son's 
 might be no better than a second edition of the 
 bitter struggle she had shared with my poor 
 father. 
 
30 CHARLES GOUNOD 
 
 In her despair she sought our Principal, Mon- 
 sieur Poirson, and consulted him about her trouble. 
 He cheered her up. 
 
 " Do not be the least uneasy," so he spoke to 
 her; "your son shall not be a musician. He is a 
 good little boy, and does his lessons well. The 
 masters are all pleased with him. I will take the 
 matter into my own hands, and later on you will 
 see him in the Ecole Normale. Do not worry 
 about him, Madame Gounod ; as I said before, 
 your son shall not be a musician." 
 
 My mother retired, greatly comforted, and the 
 Principal sent for me to his study. 
 
 "Well, little man," said he, "what is this I 
 hear ? You want to be a musician ? " 
 
 "Yes, sir." 
 
 " But what are you dreaming of? A musician 
 has no real position at all ! " 
 
 " What, sir ! Is it not a position in itself 
 to be able to call oneself Mozart or Rossini ? " 
 Fourteen-year-old boy as I was, I felt a glow of 
 indignant pride. 
 
 The Principal's face changed at once. 
 
 " Oh ! you look at it in that way, do you ? 
 Very well. Let us see if you have the making 
 of a musician in you. I have had a box at the 
 
CHILDHOOD 31 
 
 Opera for over ten years, so I am a pretty fair 
 judge." 
 
 He opened a drawer, took out a sheet of paper, 
 and wrote down some lines of poetry. 
 
 " Take this away," he said, " and set it to music 
 for me." 
 
 Full of delight, I took my leave and went back 
 to the class-room. On the way I devoured the 
 poetry he had given me, with feverish haste. It 
 was the romance from "Joseph" — "A peine au 
 sortir de l'enfance," &c. 
 
 I had never heard of "Joseph" nor of Mehul, 
 so I had no reminiscences to confuse me or make 
 me fear I might fall into plagiarism. My profound 
 indifference to Latin exercises, at this rapturous 
 moment, may well be imagined. 
 
 By the next play hour my ballad was set to 
 music, and I hurried with it to the Principal's 
 room. 
 
 " Well ! what's the matter, my boy ? " 
 
 " I have finished the ballad, sir." 
 
 "What! already? 
 
 " Yes, sir." 
 
 " Let me see — now sing it through to me." 
 
 "But, sir, I want a piano for the accompani- 
 ment." 
 
32 CHARLES GOUNOD 
 
 (I knew, there was one in the next room, on 
 which Monsieur Poirson's daughter was learning 
 music.) 
 
 " No, never mind ; I don't want a piano." 
 
 " Yes, sir, but I do, because of my harmonies." 
 
 " Your harmonies ! what harmonies ? Where 
 are they ? " 
 
 " Here, sir," said I, putting my finger to my 
 forehead. 
 
 " Oh, really ! Well, never mind ; sing it, all the 
 same. I shall understand it well enough without 
 the harmonies. 
 
 I saw there was no way out of it, so I sang it 
 through. 
 
 Before I got half-way through the first verse I 
 saw my judge's eye soften. Then I took 
 courage — I felt myself winning the game — I went 
 on boldly, and when I had finished, the' Principal 
 said — 
 
 "Come, we will go to the piano." 
 
 My triumph was certain. I was sure of all my 
 weapons. I sang my little ballad over again, and 
 at length poor Monsieur Poirson, completely 
 beaten, took my face in his hands, kissed me with 
 tears in his eyes, and said — 
 
 " Go on, my boy ; you shall be a musician ! " 
 
CHILDHOOD 33 
 
 My dear mother had acted prudently. Her 
 opposition had been dictated by her maternal 
 solicitude, but the danger of consenting too pre- 
 cipitately to my desire was outweighed by the 
 heavy responsibility of perhaps impeding my 
 natural vocation. The Principal's encouragement 
 robbed my mother's objections of their chief sup- 
 port, and herself of the aid she had most reckoned 
 upon to make me change my mind. The assault 
 had been delivered. The siege had begun. It 
 was time to capitulate. But she held out as long 
 as she could, and, in her dread of yielding too soon 
 and too easily to my prayers, she betook herself 
 to the following plan, as her final resource. 
 
 There then lived in Paris a German named 
 Antoine Reicha, who had the highest possible 
 reputation as a theoretical musician. Besides 
 being Professor of Composition at the Conser- 
 vatoire (of which Cherubini was at that time 
 Director), Reicha received private pupils in his 
 own home. My mother thought of placing me 
 under him to study harmony, counterpoint, and 
 fugue — the elements of the art of composition, in 
 fact. She therefore asked the Principal's permis- 
 sion to take me to him on Sundays during' the 
 
 c 
 
34 CHARLES GOUNOD 
 
 boys' walking hour. As the time spent in going 
 to and from Reicha's house, added to that spent 
 over my lesson, practically covered the same 
 period as the boys' airing, my regular studies 
 were not likely to be interfered with by this 
 special favour. 
 
 The Principal gave his consent, and my mother 
 took me to Reicha's house. But, before she 
 handed me over to him, she thus (as she told 
 me herself long afterwards) addressed him 
 privately — 
 
 " My dear Monsieur Reicha, I bring you my 
 son, a mere child, who desires to devote himself 
 to musical composition. I bring him against my 
 own judgment ; I dread an artist's life for him, 
 knowing, as I do, the many difficulties which beset 
 it. But I will not ever reproach myself, nor let 
 my son reproach me, with having hindered his 
 career, or spoilt his happiness. I want to make 
 quite sure, before all else, that his talent is real 
 and his vocation true. And so I beg you will 
 put him to the severest test. Place everything 
 that is most difficult before him. If he is destined 
 to be a true artist, no trouble will discourage 
 him; he will triumph over it all. If, on the other 
 hand, he loses heart, I shall know where I am ; 
 
CHILDHOOD 35 
 
 and shall certainly not allow him to embark on a 
 career, the first obstacles in which he has not 
 energy to overcome." 
 
 Reicha promised my mother I should be treated 
 as she wished ; and he kept his word, as far as in 
 him lay. 
 
 As samples of my boyish talent, I had 
 brought him a few sheets of manuscript music 
 — ballads, preludes, scraps of valses, and so 
 forth, — the musical trifles my boyish brain had 
 woven. 
 
 After looking them over, Reicha said to my 
 mother, " This child already knows a good deal 
 of what I shall have to teach him, but he is un- 
 conscious of the knowledge he possesses." 
 
 In a year or two I had reached a point in my 
 harmony studies which was rather beyond the 
 elementary stage — counterpoint of all kinds, for 
 instance, fugues, canons, &c. My mother then 
 asked him — 
 
 " Well, what do you think of him ? " 
 
 " I think, my dear lady, that it is no use trying 
 to stop him ; nothing disheartens him. He finds 
 pleasure and interest in everything ; and what I 
 like best about him is, he always wants to know 
 the ' reason why.' " 
 
36 CHARLES GOUNOD 
 
 " Well," said my mother, " I suppose I must 
 give in." 
 
 I knew right well there was no trifling with 
 her. Often she would say to me — 
 
 " You know, if you don't get on well, round 
 comes a cab, and off you go to the notary." 
 The very idea of a notary's office was enough to 
 make me do miracles. 
 
 But, anyhow, my college reports were good ; 
 and though I was threatened with extra work 
 to make up for lost time, I took good care the 
 masters should have no cause to complain that 
 my music interfered with my other studies. 
 
 Once indeed I was punished, and pretty 
 sharply too, for having left some work or other 
 unfinished. The master had given me a heavy 
 imposition, 500 lines or thereabouts to write out. 
 I was writing away (or rather I was scribbling 
 with the careless haste which is usually bestowed 
 on such a task) when the usher on duty came to 
 the table. He watched me silently for some 
 minutes, then laid his hand quietly on my 
 shoulder and said — 
 
 " You know you are writing dreadfully badly." 
 
 I looked up and answered, "You surely don't 
 think I'm doing it for pleasure, do you ? " 
 
CHILDHOOD 37 
 
 "It only bores you because you do it badly." 
 He went on quietly, "If you took a little more 
 trouble about it, it would bore you less." 
 
 The simple, sensible words, and the gentle 
 and persuasive kindness which marked their 
 quiet utterance, made such an impression on me, 
 that I do not think I ever offended again by 
 negligence or inattention to my work. They 
 brought me a sudden revelation, as complete as 
 it was precise, of what diligence and attention 
 really mean. I returned to my imposition, and 
 finished it in a very different frame of mind. 
 The irksomeness of the task was lost in the 
 satisfaction and benefit of the good advice I had 
 been given. 
 
 Meanwhile my musical studies bore good fruit, 
 and daily grew more and more absorbing. 
 
 My mother seized the opportunity of a vacation 
 of some days' duration, the New Year's holidays, 
 to give me what was at once a great pleasure and 
 an exceedingly precious lesson. 
 
 Mozart's " Don Giovanni " was being played 
 at the Theatre Italien, and thither she took me 
 herself. The exquisite evening I spent with her, 
 in that small box on the fourth tier, remains one 
 of my most precious and delicious memories. I 
 
38 CHARLES GOUNOD 
 
 am not certain of being right, but I think it was 
 by Reicha's advice that my mother took me to 
 hear " Don Giovanni." 
 
 When I look back on the emotion that master- 
 piece roused within me, I feel inclined to doubt 
 whether my pen is capable of describing it, 
 not indeed faithfully — that were impossible — but 
 even so as to give some faint conception of what 
 I felt during those matchless hours, whose charm 
 still lingers with me, as in some luminous vision, 
 some revelation of hidden glory. 
 
 The first notes of the Overture, with the solemn 
 and majestic chords out of the Commendatore's 
 final scene, seemed to lift me into a new world. 
 I was chilled by a sensation of actual terror ; but 
 when I heard that terrible threatening roll of 
 ascending and descending scales, stern and im- 
 placable as a death-warrant, I was seized with 
 such shuddering fear, that my head fell upon my 
 mother's shoulder, and, trembling in the dual 
 embrace of beauty and of horror, I could only 
 murmur — 
 
 "Oh, mother, what music! that is real music 
 indeed ! " 
 
 Rossini's " Otello " had awakened the germs 
 of my musical instinct ; but the effect " Don Gio- 
 
CHILDHOOD 39 
 
 vanni " had on me was very different in its nature 
 and results. I think the two impressions might 
 be said to differ in the same way as those pro- 
 duced on the mind of a painter called from the 
 study of the Venetian masters to the contempla- 
 tion of the works of Raphael, of Leonardo da 
 Vinci, or of Michael Angelo. 
 
 Rossini taught me the purely sensuous rapture 
 music gives ; he charmed and enchanted my ear. 
 Mozart, however, did more ; to this enjoyment, 
 already so utterly perfect from a musical and 
 sensuous point of view, he added the deep and 
 penetrating influence of the most absolute purity 
 united to the most consummate beauty of expres- 
 sion. I sat in one long rapture from the begin- 
 ning of the opera to its close. 
 
 The pathetic accents of the trio at the death 01 
 the Commendatore, and of Donna Anna's lamen- 
 tation over her father's corpse, Zerlina's fascinat- 
 ing numbers, and the consummate elegance of 
 the trio of the Masks and of that which opens the 
 second act, under Zerlina's window — the whole 
 opera, in fact (for in such an immortal work 
 every page deserves mention), gave me a sense of 
 blissful delight such as can only be conferred by 
 those supremely beautiful works which command 
 
4° CHARLES GOUNOD 
 
 the admiration of all time, and serve to mark the 
 highest possible level of aesthetic culture. 
 
 This visit to the Opera was the most treasured 
 New Year's gift my childhood ever knew ; 
 and later on, when I won the Grand Prix de 
 Rome, my dear mother's present to me, in 
 memory of my success, was the score of " Don 
 Giovanni." 
 
 That year was, indeed, particularly propitious 
 to the development of my musical taste. After 
 hearing " Don Giovanni," I went in Holy Week 
 to two sacred concerts given by the Conservatoire 
 Concert Society, which Habeneck then directed. 
 At the first, Beethoven's "Pastoral Symphony" 
 was played; at the other, the "Choral Sym- 
 phony" by the same master. This added fresh 
 impulse to my musical ardour. I remember 
 clearly how these two performances, besides 
 giving me an inkling of the proud and fearless 
 personality of that mighty and unrivalled genius, 
 left an instinctive feeling with me that the com- 
 poser's language, if I may call it so, was closely 
 akin, in many ways at least, to that I had first 
 listened to in " Don Giovanni." 
 
 Something told me that these two great 
 talents, each so peerless in its way, came of a 
 
CHILDHOOD 41 
 
 common stock, and professed the same musical 
 dogma. 
 
 Meanwhile my school life was slipping away. 
 My mother had not yet given up the hope that 
 I might change my mind. She had reckoned 
 on the lengthening of my school hours to have 
 that effect; but failing this, she counted on finally 
 dissuading me by telling me that if I drew an 
 unfavourable number at the conscription I should 
 have to serve, as she was too poor to pay a 
 substitute. 
 
 This was a transparent subterfuge. The poor 
 dear woman, who had often enough eaten a 
 crust herself so that her children might be filled, 
 would sooner have sold the very bed she lay 
 on than part with one of us. So, being old 
 enough to understand and appreciate the grati- 
 tude and love I owed her for such a life of 
 devoted labour and self-sacrifice, I answered, 
 when she mentioned the conscription to me — 
 
 " All right, mother dear ; don't let us talk 
 about it. I will see to it myself. I will win 
 the Grand Prix de Rome, and buy myself 
 off." 
 
 I was at that time in the third class at the 
 
42 CHARLES GOUNOD 
 
 Lycee. A little incident which had just occurred 
 in school had gained me a certain amount of 
 respect amongst my comrades. 
 
 Our form master was a Monsieur Roberge, 
 who was desperately fond of Latin verses. To 
 write good ones was a certain means of getting 
 into his good books. Some schoolboy trick had 
 been played on him one day, and as the delin- 
 quent would not confess, nor any other boy tell 
 of him, Monsieur Roberge stopped the whole 
 class's leave. As the Easter vacation, which 
 meant four or five days' holiday, was at hand, 
 this was a terrible punishment indeed. Never- 
 theless, schoolboy honour stood firm, and the 
 name of the culprit was not divulged. 
 
 The idea struck me that if I were to attack 
 Monsieur Roberge on his weak point, he might 
 relent. 
 
 Without a word to my comrades, I wrote a 
 copy of Latin verses, taking for my theme the 
 sufferings of the caged bird, far from the country 
 and the woods, cut off from the bright sun and 
 the free air, and plaintively crying out for liberty. 
 Good luck attended me — I suppose because my 
 object was so meritorious ! 
 
 When we got back into school, I seized an 
 
CHILDHOOD 43 
 
 opportunity, when Monsieur Roberge's back was 
 turned, to lay my little effusion on his desk. On 
 taking his seat he saw the paper, opened it, and 
 began to read. 
 
 "Gentlemen," he said, "who wrote these 
 lines?" 
 
 I held up my hand. 
 
 " They are extremely good," said he. Then, 
 after a moment, " I cancel the punishment 
 inflicted on this class ; you can thank your com- 
 rade Gounod for earning your liberty by his 
 good work." 
 
 Unnecessary to describe the civic honours 
 showered on me in return. 
 
 At length I got into the second class, and 
 found myself once again under my beloved former 
 master, Adolphe Regnier, who had taught me 
 while I was in the sixth. 
 
 Among my new comrades were Eugene 
 Despois, afterwards a brilliant pupil at the Ecole 
 Normale, and a well-known classic, Octave Ducros 
 de Sixt, and Albert Delacourtie, the high-minded 
 and clever lawyer, still one of my closest and 
 most faithful friends. We four practically mono- 
 polised the top places, the " Banc d'Honneur." 
 
 At Easter I was considered sufficiently advanced 
 
44 CHARLES GOUNOD 
 
 to warrant my being transferred to the Rhetoric 
 class ; * but I only remained in it three months, 
 as my studies had been sufficiently satisfactory 
 for my mother finally to abandon her idea of 
 extra classes. 
 
 I left the Lycee at the summer vacation, being 
 then a little over seventeen. 
 
 Still I had not passed through the Philosophy 
 class, and my mother had no intention of allow- 
 ing me to leave my education incomplete. It 
 was therefore agreed and arranged that I was to 
 go on working at home, and, without interrupting 
 my musical studies, to read for my Bachelor of 
 Arts degree, which I succeeded in taking within 
 the year. 
 
 I have often regretted that I did not take a 
 science degree as well. I should thus have made 
 acquaintance at an early age with many ideas 
 whose importance I only realised later in life, 
 and my ignorance of which I much regret. But 
 time was running short. I had to set to work 
 if I was to win the Grand Prix de Rome, as 
 I had promised; it was a matter of life or death 
 
 1 In French public schools the upper classes are not referred 
 to by numbers. Thus the first or highest class is " Philosophy," 
 the second "Rhetoric," and so on. (See also post, in text.) 
 
CHILDHOOD 45 
 
 for my career. So there was not a moment to 
 be lost. 
 
 Reicha being just dead, I was bereft of my 
 instructor. The idea of taking me to Cherubini, 
 and asking him to put me into one of the com- 
 position classes at the Conservatoire, struck my 
 mother. I took some of my exercise books under 
 my arm, to give Cherubini some notion of what 
 Reicha had taught me. But he did not think fit 
 to look at them. He questioned me closely about 
 my past, and as soon as he knew I had been a 
 pupil of Reicha's (although the latter had been 
 a colleague of his at the Conservatoire), he said 
 to my mother — 
 
 " Very well ; now he must begin all over again. 
 I don't approve of Reicha's style. He was a 
 German, and this boy ought to follow the Italian 
 method. I shall put him under my pupil Halevy, 
 to work at counterpoint and fugue." 
 
 Cherubini's view was that the Italian school 
 followed the only orthodox system of music, as 
 laid down by Palestrina, whereas the Germans 
 look upon Sebastian Bach as the high priest of 
 harmony. 
 
 Far from being discouraged by this decision, 
 I was only too delighted. 
 
46 CHARLES GOUNOD 
 
 "All the better," said I to myself; and to my 
 mother, later on, " It will be great advantage to 
 me. I can choose the best points of both the 
 great schools. It is all for the best." 
 
 I joined Halevy's class, and at the same time 
 Cherubini put me into the hands of Berton, the 
 author of " Montano and Stephanie," and a 
 varied collection of other works of high value, 
 who was to instruct me in lyrical composition. 
 
 Berton was a man of quick wit, kindly and 
 refined. He was a great admirer of Mozart, 
 whose works he constantly recommended to the 
 attention of his old pupils. 
 
 " Study Mozart," he was always saying ; " study 
 the ' Nozze de Figaro ! ' " 
 
 He was quite right. That work should be 
 every musician's text -book. Mozart bears the 
 same relation to Palestrina and Bach as the New 
 Testament bears to the Old, in Holy Writ. 
 
 When Berton died, as he did a couple of 
 months after I joined his class, Cherubini handed 
 me over to Le Sueur, the composer of " Les 
 Bardes," " La Caverne," and of many masses 
 and oratorios. 
 
 He was a man of grave and reserved character, 
 but fervent and almost biblical in inspiration, and 
 
CHILDHOOD 47 
 
 devoted to sacred subjects. He looked like an 
 old patriarch, with his tall figure and waxen 
 complexion. 
 
 Le Sueur received me with the greatest kind- 
 ness, almost amounting to paternal tenderness ; 
 he was very affectionate and warm-hearted. I 
 was only under him, I regret to say, for nine or 
 ten months ; but the period, short as it was, was 
 of incalculable benefit to me. The wise and 
 high-minded counsels he bestowed on me entitle 
 him to an honoured place in my memory and my 
 grateful affection. 
 
 Under Halevy's guidance I re-learned the whole 
 theory and practice of counterpoint and fugue ; 
 but although I worked hard, and gained my 
 master's approval, I never won a prize at the 
 Conservatoire. My one and constant aim was 
 that Grand Prix de Rome, which I had sworn 
 to win at any cost. 
 
 I was nearly nineteen when I first competed 
 for it. I got the second prize. 
 
 On the death of Le Sueur I continued to 
 study under Paer, his successor as Professor of 
 Composition. 
 
 I tried again the following year. My poor 
 mother was torn between hope and fear. This 
 
48 CHARLES GOUNOD 
 
 time it must be either the Grand Prix or nothing ! 
 Alas ! it was the latter ; and I was just twenty, 
 the age when my military service was due. 
 
 However, the fact of my having won the 
 second prize the year before entitled me to 
 twelve months' grace, and gave me the chance 
 of making a third and last effort. 
 
 To make up for my disappointment, my 
 mother took me for a month's tour in Switzer- 
 land. She was as bright and active then, at 
 eight-and-fifty, as any other woman of thirty. 
 As I had never been outside Paris, except to 
 Versailles, Rouen, and Havre, this tour was a 
 dream of delight to me. Geneva, Chamounix, 
 the Oberland, the Righi, the Lakes, the journey 
 home by Bale, successively claimed my admira- 
 tion. We went through the whole of Switzer- 
 land on mule-back, rising early, going late to 
 rest ; and my mother was always up and ready 
 dressed before she roused me. 
 
 I returned to Paris full of fresh zeal for my 
 work, and quite determined this time to carry off 
 the Grand Prix de Rome. 
 
 At last the period of competition came round. 
 I entered, and I won the prize. 
 
 My poor, mother wept for joy, first of all, but 
 
CHILDHOOD 49 
 
 afterwards at the thought that the first result of 
 my triumph would be to separate us for three 
 weary years, two of which I should have to 
 spend in Rome and one in Germany. We had 
 never been parted before, and now her daily 
 life was going to be like the story of the " Two 
 Pigeons." 
 
 The winners of the other Grand Prizes of my 
 year were Hebert for painting, Gruyere for 
 sculpture, Lefuel for architecture, and Vauthier 
 (grandson of Galle) for medal engraving. 
 
 Towards the end of October the different 
 prizes were publicly awarded with becoming 
 solemnity. This ceremony was an annual func- 
 tion, one of its features being the performance 
 of the cantata which had won the music prize. 
 My brother, who was an architect, had highly 
 distinguished himself at the licole des Beaux 
 Arts under the teaching of Huyot. Whether it 
 was that he foresaw his younger brother would 
 one day win a Grand Prix, and consequently 
 have to go abroad to study, I know not, but 
 Urbain utterly refused to compete for a similar 
 honour himself. He did not choose to leave a 
 mother he adored, and of whom he was the prop 
 and support for five long years. But he did 
 
So CHARLES GOUNOD 
 
 carry off a prize known as the Departmental 
 Prize, conferred on the student who has won 
 the greatest number of medals during his atten- 
 dance at the Ecole des Beaux Arts. 
 
 The winner of this prize was publicly named 
 at a general sitting of the Institute, and my proud 
 mother had the satisfaction of seeing both her 
 sons honoured in the same day. 
 
 I have already mentioned that my brother was 
 educated at the Versailles Lycee. There he be- 
 came acquainted with Lefuel, whose father was 
 architect at the Palace, and who was to live to 
 add lustre to the name he bore. They met again 
 as fellow-pupils in the office of Huyot, one of 
 the architects of the Arc de Triomphe, and there 
 became, and always continued, the firmest of 
 friends. Lefuel was nearly nine years older than 
 I. My mother, who loved him like her own son, 
 urgently begged him to look after me ; and, in 
 duty to the memory of my good old friend, I 
 chronicle the faithful care and watchfulness with 
 which he performed his trust. 
 
 Before I started abroad I was offered a piece of 
 work, considerable enough at any age, but doubly 
 so at mine. Dietsch, the chapel-master of St, 
 
CHILDHOOD Si 
 
 Eustache, who at that time was chorus -master 
 at the Opera, said to me one day — 
 
 " Why don't you write a mass before going to 
 Rome ? If you will compose one, I will have it 
 sung at St. Eustache." 
 
 A mass ! of my composition ! and at St. Eus- 
 tache ! I thought I must be dreaming ! 
 
 I had five months before me, so I set to work 
 at once. Thanks to my mother's industrious 
 help in copying the orchestral parts (we were 
 too poor to afford a copyist), all was ready on 
 the appointed day. A mass with full orchestra — 
 think of that ! 
 
 I dedicated this work — over -boldly perhaps, 
 but certainly with deep gratitude — to the memory 
 of my beloved and regretted master, Le Sueur, 
 and I myself conducted the performance at St. 
 Eustache. 
 
 My mass, I readily admit, was a work of no 
 very remarkable value. The novice's inexperi- 
 ence in the art of handling an orchestra with 
 all its varied tints of sound, which needs so long 
 a practical experience, was all too apparent. As 
 to the musical ideas my work contained, their 
 value was confined to a fairly clear conception 
 of the sense of its sacred subject, and a tolerably 
 
52 CHARLES GOUNOD 
 
 close harmony between that sense and the music 
 intended to illustrate it. But vigour of design 
 and general outline were sorely lacking. 
 
 However that may have been, this first at- 
 tempt brought me much kind encouragement ; 
 the following, for instance, which touched me 
 specially. 
 
 Returning home with my mother after the 
 performance of the mass, I found a messenger 
 with a note awaiting me at the door of our 
 apartment (then at 8 Rue de l'fiperon, on the 
 ground floor). I opened the letter, and read as 
 follows : — 
 
 "Well done, young fellow, whom I remember 
 as a child! All honour to your 'Gloria,' your 
 ' Credo,' and, above all, your ' Sanctus.' It is 
 fine, it is full of religious feeling ! Well done, 
 and many thanks ! You have made me very 
 happy ! " 
 
 It was from good Monsieur Poirson, my former 
 Principal at Saint Louis, then Principal of the 
 Lycee Charlemagne. He had seen the announce- 
 ment of my mass, and had come with all speed 
 to witness the first public appearance of the young 
 artist to whom he had said, seven years before, 
 " Go on, my boy ; you shall be a musician ! " 
 
CHILDHOOD S3 
 
 I was so touched by his kindly thought, that I 
 did not even wait to go indoors. I rushed into 
 the street, called a cab, and hurried to the Lycee 
 Charlemagne, in the Rue St. Antoine, where I 
 found my dear old Principal, who clasped me 
 to his heart. 
 
 I had only four more days to spend with my 
 mother before leaving her for three years. She, 
 poor woman, through her constant tears, was 
 getting everything ready against the day of my 
 departure. Very soon it came. 
 
II 
 
 ITALY 
 
 We left Paris, Lefuel and Vauthier and I, on 
 December 5th, 1839, by the mail-coach which 
 started from the Rue Jean Jacques Rousseau. 
 
 My brother was the only person there to bid 
 us farewell. Our first stage took us to Lyons. 
 Thence we followed the course of the Rhone, by 
 Avignon, Aries, &c, till we reached Marseilles. 
 
 At Marseilles we took a "vetturino." 
 
 " Vetturino ! " What memories the word re- 
 calls ! Alas for the poor old travelling carriage 
 long since shouldered out of existence, crushed 
 and smothered under the hurrying feet of the iron 
 horse ! 
 
 The good-natured old conveyance which one 
 stopped at will, whenever one wanted peace- 
 fully to admire those beautiful bits of scenery 
 through or mayhap underneath which the snort- 
 ing steam horse, devouring space like any meteor, 
 now whisks you like a parcel ! In those days 
 
ITALY 55 
 
 men travelled gradually, insensibly from one im- 
 pression to another ; now this railway mortar fires 
 us from Paris, in our sleep, to wake under some 
 Eastern sky. No imperceptible mental transition 
 or climatic change ! We are shot out roughly, 
 treated as a British merchant treats his mer- 
 chandise. Close packed like bales down in a 
 hold, and delivered with all speed, like fish sent 
 on by express train to make sure of its arriving 
 fresh ! If only progress, that remorseless con- 
 queror, would even spare its victims' lives ! But 
 no, the vetturino has departed utterly. Yet I 
 bless his memory. But for his aid, I should have 
 never had the joy of seeing that wonderful 
 Corniche, the ideal introduction to the delicious 
 climate and the picturesque charms of Italy — 
 Monaco, Mentone, Sestri, Genoa, Spezzia, Trasi- 
 meno, Tuscany, Pisa, Lucca, Sienna, Perugia, 
 Florence. A progressive and many-sided educa- 
 tion, Nature's explanation of the existence of the 
 great masters, while they in turn teach man to 
 look at Nature. For close on two happy months 
 we dallied over all this loveliness, leisurely tast- 
 ing and enjoying it, till finally, on January 27th, 
 1840, we entered the great city which was to 
 be our home, our teacher, our initiator into the 
 
56 CHARLES GOUNOD 
 
 noblest and severest beauties of nature and of 
 art. 
 
 The Director of the French Academy at that 
 time was Monsieur Ingres. He had been one of 
 my father's early friends. On our arrival, we 
 called, as in duty bound, to pay him our respects. 
 As soon as he saw me he cried — 
 
 " You are Gounod, I am sure ! Goodness ! 
 how like your father you are ! " 
 
 He spoke of my father's talent as a draughts- 
 man, of his kind disposition, of his brilliant wit 
 and conversational powers, with an admiration 
 which, coming as it did from the lips of so dis- 
 tinguished an artist, constituted the most delight- 
 ful welcome I could have had. Soon we were 
 established in our different quarters, consisting 
 in each case of a single large apartment, called 
 a Loggia, which served alike as bedroom and 
 as studio. 
 
 My first thought was of the length of time 
 which must elapse before I saw my mother 
 again. I wondered whether my work as an art 
 student would suffice to enable me to bear with 
 any sort of patience a separation which, between 
 Rome and Germany, must cover quite three 
 years. 
 
ITALY S7 
 
 Gazing from my window on the dome of St. 
 Peter's in the distance, I readily yielded to the 
 melancholy aroused by my first taste of solitude — 
 though solitude is hardly a word applicable to 
 this palace, where twenty-two of us dwelt, and 
 where we all met at least twice daily at the 
 common board, in that splendid dining-hall, the 
 walls of which are covered with the portraits 
 of every student since the foundation of the 
 Academy. Besides, it was my nature to make 
 friends quickly, and live on excellent terms with 
 those about me. 
 
 I must admit, too, that my low spirits were in 
 great part due to my first impressions of Rome 
 itself. I was utterly disappointed. Instead of 
 the city of my dreams, majestic and imposing, 
 full of ancient temples, antique monuments, and 
 picturesque ruins, I saw a mere provincial town, 
 vulgar, characterless, and, in most places, very 
 dirty. 
 
 My disenchantment was complete, and it 
 would have required but little persuasion to 
 make me throw up the sponge, pack my traps, 
 and hurry back to Paris and all I cared for as 
 quickly as wheels could take me there. As a 
 matter of fact, Rome does possess all the beauties 
 
58 CHARLES GOUNOD 
 
 I had dreamt of, but the eye of a new-comer 
 cannot at first perceive them. They must be 
 sought out, felt for, here and there, until by slow 
 degrees the sleeping glories of the splendid past 
 awake, and the dumb ruins and dry bones arise 
 once more to life before their patient student's 
 eyes. 
 
 I was still too young, not only in years, but 
 also and especially in character, to grasp or 
 understand at the first glance the deep signi- 
 ficance of the solemn, austere city, whose whisper 
 is so low that only ears accustomed to deep 
 silence and sharpened by seclusion can catch its 
 tones. Rome is the echo of the Scriptural words 
 of the Maker of the human soul to His own 
 handiwork : "I will bring her into the wilder- 
 ness, and speak comfortably to her." So various 
 is she in herself, and in such deep calm is every- 
 thing about her lapped, that no conception of 
 her immense ensemble and prodigious wealth of 
 treasures is possible at first. The Past, the Pre- 
 sent, and the Future alike crown her the capital 
 not of Italy only, but of the human race in 
 general. This fact is recognised by all who 
 have lived there long ; for whatever the country 
 whence the wanderer comes, whatever tongue 
 
ITALY 59 
 
 he speaks, Rome has a universal language under- 
 stood by all, so that the thoughtful traveller, 
 leaving her, feels he leaves home behind him. 
 
 Little by little I felt my low spirits evaporate 
 and a new feeling take their place. I began to 
 know Rome better, and cast aside the winding- 
 sheet which had enwrapped me, as it were. But 
 even up to this I had not been living in down- 
 right idleness. 
 
 My favourite amusement was reading Goethe's 
 " Faust," in French of course, as I knew no 
 German. I read too, with great interest, " Lamar- 
 tine's Poems." Before I began to think about 
 sending home my first batch of work, for which 
 I still had plenty of time before me, I busied 
 myself in composing a number of melodies, 
 among others " Le Vallon" and also " Le Soir," 
 the music of which I incorporated ten years after- 
 wards into a scene in the first act of my opera 
 " Sappho," to the beautiful lines written by my 
 dear friend and famous colleague, Emile Augier, 
 " Hero sur la tour solitaire." 
 
 I wrote both these songs at a few days' in- 
 terval, almost as soon as I arrived at the Villa 
 Medecis. 
 
 Six weeks or so slipped away. My eyes had 
 
60 CHARLES GOUNOD 
 
 grown accustomed to the silent city, which at first 
 had seemed so like a desert to me. The very 
 silence ended by having its own charm, by be- 
 coming an actual pleasure to me ; and I took 
 particular delight in roaming about the Forum, 
 the ruins of the Palatine Hill, and the Coliseum, 
 those glorious relics of a power and splendour 
 departed, which have rested now for centuries 
 under the august and peaceful rule of the uni- 
 versal Shepherd, and the Empress city of the 
 world. 
 
 A very worthy and pleasant family of the 
 name of Desgoffe was at that time staying with 
 Monsieur and Madame Ingres. I had made 
 their acquaintance, and gradually became very 
 intimate with them. Alexandre Desgoffe was 
 not an Academy student like myself, but a private 
 pupil of Monsieur Ingres, and a very fine land- 
 scape painter. Yet he lived in the Academy 
 buildings with his wife and daughter, a charming 
 child of nine, who afterwards became Madame 
 Paul Flandrin, and retained as a wife and mother 
 the sweetness which characterised her girlhood. 
 Desgoffe himself was a man in ten thousand ; 
 downright and honest, modest and unselfish, 
 simple and pure-minded as a child, the kindest 
 
ITALY 6 1 
 
 and most faithful soul on earth. It may easily 
 be guessed that my mother was very glad to 
 learn that I had such good people near me to 
 show me true affection, and not only comfort 
 my loneliness, but, if necessary, give me kind 
 and devoted care. 
 
 We students always spent our Sunday evenings 
 in the Director's drawing-room, to which we had 
 the right of entree on that day. Generally there 
 was music. Monsieur Ingres had taken a fancy 
 to me, and he was music mad. He particularly 
 affected Haydn, Mozart, Beethoven, and above 
 all Gluck, whose noble style, with its touch of 
 pathos, stamped him in his mind as something 
 of the ancient Greek, a worthy scion of /Eschylus, 
 of Sophocles, or Euripides. 
 
 Monsieur Ingres played the violin. He was 
 no finished performer, still less was he an artist ; 
 but in his youth he had played in the orchestra 
 of his native town, Montauban, and taken part in 
 the performance of Gluck's operas. 
 
 I had read and studied the German composer's 
 works. As to Mozart's " Don Giovanni," I knew 
 it all by heart ; so, although not a very good 
 pianist, I was quite up to treating Monsieur 
 Ingres to recollections of his favourite score. 
 
6 2 CHARLES GOUNOD 
 
 Beethoven's symphonies I knew by heart, too, 
 and these he passionately admired ; we often 
 spent the greater part of the night deep in talk 
 over the great master's works, and before long I 
 stood high in his good graces. 
 
 Nobody who was not intimately acquainted 
 with Monsieur Ingres can have any correct idea 
 of what he really was. I lived in close familiarity 
 with him for some considerable time, and I can 
 testify to the simplicity, uprightness, and frank- 
 ness of his nature. He was full of candour and 
 of noble impulse, enthusiastic, even eloquent at 
 times. He could be as tender and gentle as a 
 child, and then again he would pour out a torrent 
 of apostolic wrath. His unaffectedness and sen- 
 sitive delicacy were touching, and there was a 
 freshness of feeling about the man which has 
 never yet been found in any poseur, as some 
 people have elected to call him. 
 
 Humble and modest in the presence of a 
 master-mind, he stood up proudly and boldly 
 against foolish arrogance and self-sufficiency. 
 He was fatherly in his treatment of his students, 
 whom he looked on as his children, giving each 
 his appointed rank with jealous care, whatever 
 that of the visitors in his drawing-room might be. 
 
ITALY 63 
 
 Such were the characteristics of the excellent 
 noble-minded artist, whose invaluable tuition I 
 was about to have the good fortune of receiving. 
 
 I was deeply attached to him, and I shall 
 always remember his dropping in my hearing 
 one or two of those luminous sentences which, 
 when properly understood, cast so much light 
 upon the artistic life. Every one knows that 
 famous saying of his, " Drawing is the honesty 
 of art." He said another thing before me once, 
 which is a perfect volume in itself, " There is no 
 grace where there is no strength." True, indeed ! 
 for grace and strength are the two complementary 
 constituents of perfect beauty. Strength saves 
 grace from degenerating into mere wanton charm, 
 while grace purifies strength from all its coarse- 
 ness and brutality — the perfect harmony of the 
 two thus marking the highest level art can reach, 
 and giving it the stamp of genius. 
 
 It has been said and frequently repeated, parrot- 
 wise, that Monsieur Ingres was intolerant and ex- 
 clusive. That is utterly untrue. If he had a way 
 of imposing his opinions, it was because of his 
 intense belief — the surest means of influencing 
 others. I never knew any one with such a power 
 of universal admiration, simply because he knew 
 
64 CHARLES GOUNOD 
 
 better than most what to admire, and wherein 
 beauty lay. But he was discreet. He knew 
 full well how prone youthful enthusiasm is to 
 fall down and worship unreasoningly before the 
 personal peculiarities of an artist or composer. 
 He knew these same peculiarities — which are, as 
 it were, the individual characteristics and facial 
 features whereby we recognise them, as we recog- 
 nise each other — are, for that very reason, the 
 most incommunicable qualities about them, and 
 thence he deduced the fact, first, that any imita- 
 tion of them amounts to plagiarism, and, further, 
 that such imitation must infallibly end in exag- 
 geration, degenerating into absolute artistic vice. 
 
 This explanation of Monsieur Ingres's real 
 character will partially account for the unjust ac- 
 cusation of intolerance and exclusiveness levelled 
 against him. 
 
 The following anecdote proves how loyally he 
 could abandon a hastily formed opinion, and how 
 little obstinacy there was about any dislike he 
 might chance to take. 
 
 I had just sung him that wonderful scene of 
 " Charon and the Shades" from " Alcestis ;" not 
 Gluck's " Alcestis," but Lulli's. It was the first 
 time he had heard it, and his primary impression 
 
ITALY 65 
 
 was that the music was hard, dry, and stern. So 
 much did he dislike it that he cried, " It's hor- 
 rible ! It's dreadful ! It isn't music at all ! It's 
 iron ! " 
 
 Young and inexperienced as I felt myself to 
 be, I naturally refrained from arguing the point 
 with a man I held in such profound respect, so 
 I waited till the storm blew over. Some time 
 after, Monsieur Ingres referred again to his first 
 impression of this work, an impression which I 
 believe had already undergone some change, and 
 said — 
 
 " By the bye ! that scene of Lulli's ' Charon 
 and the Shades' — I should like to hear it again." 
 
 I sang it over to him once more ; and this time, 
 more accustomed no doubt to that striking com- 
 poser's rugged and uneven style, he grasped the 
 irony and banter in Charon's part, and the plain- 
 tive pleadings of the wandering Shades, who 
 cannot get across the river, not having where- 
 withal to pay the ferryman. 
 
 By degrees he got so fond of the scene that it 
 became one of his favourites, and I was often 
 called upon to sing it. 
 
 But his prime favourite was Mozart's " Don 
 Giovanni," over which we often sat till two in the 
 
66 CHARLES GOUNOD 
 
 morning. Poor Madame Ingres, dropping with 
 sleep, used to be driven to locking up the piano 
 and sending us off to our respective beds. 
 Although he preferred German music, and had 
 no particular affection for Rossini, he considered 
 the " Barbiere " as a masterpiece. He had the 
 highest admiration, too, for another Italian mais- 
 tro, Cherubini, of whom he has left such a mag- 
 nificent portrait, and whom Beethoven held to 
 be the first musician of his age ; no slight praise 
 from such a man. Well, we all have our tastes ; 
 why should not Monsieur (Ingres have his ? To 
 prefer one thing does not involve condemning 
 everything else. 
 
 A chance incident brought me into closer and 
 more frequent intercourse with Monsieur Ingres. 
 Being very fond of drawing, I used often to carry 
 a sketch-book with me in my expeditions about 
 Rome. One day coming back from a stroll, I 
 came face to face with Monsieur Ingres at the 
 door of the Academy. He caught sight of the 
 sketch-book under my arm, and with that bright 
 and piercing glance of his, he said — 
 
 " What's that under your arm ? " 
 
 I was rather confused, and made answer, " Why, 
 Monsieur Ingres, it's a — it's a sketch-book." 
 
ITALY 67 
 
 " A sketch-book ! What for ? Do you know 
 how to draw ? " 
 
 " Oh, Monsieur Ingres, no — I mean — yes — I 
 can draw a little — but only a very little." 
 
 " Is that so ? Come, show me your book." 
 He opened it, and came across a little sketch of 
 St. Catherine, which I had just copied from a 
 fresco said to be by Masaccio, in the old basilica 
 of St. Clement, not far from the Coliseum. 
 
 " Did you do this ? " said Monsieur Ingres. 
 
 " Yes, sir." 
 
 "Alone?" 
 
 " Yes, sir." 
 
 "But — do you know you draw like your 
 father ? " 
 
 " Oh, Monsieur Ingres ! " 
 
 Then he added, looking at me gravely — 
 
 " You must do some tracings for me." 
 
 Make tracings for Monsieur Ingres ! work 
 beside him, perhaps ! Bask in the sunshine 01 
 his talent ! Warm myself in the glow of his 
 enthusiasm ! The thought transported me with 
 joy. 
 
 So every evening we worked side by side in 
 the lamplight at this most interesting occupation, 
 I drawing as much profit from the study of the 
 
68 CHARLES GOUNOD 
 
 masterpieces over which my careful pencil passed 
 as from Monsieur Ingres's delightful conversa- 
 tion. 
 
 I made about a hundred tracings for him of 
 original prints, which I am proud to think found 
 place in his portfolios, and some of which were 
 not less than eighteen inches high. 
 
 One day Monsieur Ingres said to me, " If you 
 like I will get you back to Rome with the Grand 
 Prix for painting." 
 
 " Oh, Monsieur Ingres ! " I answered, " I 
 could not give up my career and take up a new 
 one. Besides, I could never leave my mother a 
 second time." 
 
 However, as after all it was music I had come 
 to Rome to study and not painting, it behoved 
 me to seriously seek for opportunities of hearing 
 some. Such opportunities were not exactly 
 numerous, and, it must be confessed, not particu- 
 larly profitable nor useful either. In the first 
 place, as regarded religious music, the Sistine 
 Chapel in the Vatican was the only place where 
 it was possible to hear anything decent, to say 
 nothing of its being instructive. What they 
 called music in the other churches was enough 
 to make one shiver ! Except in the Sistine 
 
ITALY 69 
 
 Chapel, and in that called the " Canon's Chapel " 
 in St. Peter's, the music was not merely worth- 
 less, it was vile. It is hard to imagine how such 
 a chamber of horrors could ever have come to be 
 offered up to the glory of God within those sacred 
 walls. All the shabbiest tinsel and trappings of 
 secular music passed across the trestles of this 
 religious masquerade. So no wonder I never 
 tried it twice. 
 
 I generally went on Sundays to the musical 
 mass at the Sistine Chapel, often in the company 
 of my friend and comrade Hebert. 
 
 But the Sistine ! How shall I describe it as it 
 deserves ? That is a task more appropriate to 
 the authors of what we see and hear there, or 
 rather of what was heard there formerly. For if 
 the sublime though, alas ! perishable work of 
 Michael Angelo the immortal, already sorely 
 damaged, is still to be seen, the hymns of the 
 divine Palestrina no longer resound under those 
 vaulted roofs, struck dumb by the political cap- 
 tivity of the Sovereign Pontiff, the lack of whose 
 sacred presence their empty recesses seem so 
 bitterly to mourn. 
 
 I went then to the Sistine, as often as I pos- 
 sibly could. The severe, ascetic music, level and 
 
70 CHARLES GOUNOD 
 
 calm like an ocean horizon, serene even to mono- 
 tony, anti-sensuous, and yet so intense in its 
 fervour of religious contemplation as sometimes 
 to rise to ecstasy, had a strange, almost a dis- 
 agreeable effect on me at first. 
 
 Whether it was the actual style of composition, 
 then quite new to me — the distinctive sonority 
 of those peculiar voices, now heard for the first 
 time — or the firm, almost harsh attack, the strong 
 accentuation which gives such a startling effect to 
 the general execution of the score, by the way it 
 marks the opening of each vocal part in the 
 closely woven web of sound — I know not. The 
 first impression, unpleasant as it was, did not 
 dismay me. I returned again and again, until at 
 last I could not stay away. 
 
 There are certain works which ought to be 
 seen or heard in the place for which they were 
 written. The Sistine Chapel, which stands unique 
 upon the earth, is one of the spots in question. 
 The Genius who decorated roof and altar-screen 
 with his marvellous conceptions of the Genesis 
 and the Last Judgment, this painter of the pro- 
 phets, himself a prophet in his art, will doubtless 
 be as eternally unmatched as even Homer or 
 Phidias. Men of that power and stature never 
 
ITALY 71 
 
 have their equals. Each is a being apart from 
 every other. Each grasps a world of thought, 
 exhausts it, closes the book, and that which he 
 has said, no man can ever say again. 
 
 Palestrina gives, as it were, the musical transla- 
 tion of Michael Angelo's great poem. I believe 
 the two masters cast a mutual light on our intel- 
 ligence. The eyes' delight sharpens the oral 
 comprehension, and vice versd, so that one ends 
 by wondering whether the Sistine, with its music 
 and its painting, is not the fruit of one and the 
 same artistic inspiration ? Both are so perfectly 
 and sublimely blended as to appear the double 
 expression of one thought — a single chant sung 
 with a twofold voice — the music in the air a kind 
 of echo of the beauty which enchants the eye. 
 
 Between the masterpieces of Michael Angelo 
 and Palestrina such close analogy of thought, 
 such kinship of expression exist, that one is almost 
 forced to recognise the identity of the talents — I 
 had almost said the virtues — which each master- 
 mind displays. Both have the same simplicity, 
 even humility of manner ; the same seeming indif- 
 ference to effect, the same scorn for methods of 
 seduction. There is nothing artificial or mecha- 
 nical about them ; the Soul, wrapped in ecstatic 
 
72 CHARLES GOUNOD 
 
 contemplation of a higher world, describes in 
 humble and submissive language the sublime 
 visions that pass before its eyes. 
 
 Even the very character and colour of the 
 music and painting in question seem- to indicate 
 a deliberate renunciation. The art of the two 
 masters is a sort of sacrament, whose outward and 
 visible sign is but a transparent veil stretched 
 between man and the divine and living Truth. 
 Wherefore neither of the two mighty artists 
 attract at the first blush. 
 
 Generally speaking, exterior glitter is what 
 charms the eye ; but here we have none of that. 
 All the treasure lies beneath the surface. The 
 impression produced on the mind by one of 
 Palestrina's works is much the same as that 
 given by one of Bossuet's most eloquent pages. 
 There is no specially striking detail, apparently, 
 yet one is lifted into a higher atmosphere. Lan- 
 guage, the obedient and faithful exponent of 
 thought, leads the mind gently onward, without 
 any temptation to turn aside until the goal is 
 reached and you are on the upper summit, led by 
 a mysterious guide, gentle, unwavering, unswerv- 
 ing, who hides the mark of his footsteps, and 
 leaves no trace behind. 
 
ITALY 73 
 
 It is this absence of visible effort, of worldly 
 trick, and of conceited affectation which makes 
 the greatest works so unapproachable. The intel- 
 lect which conceives them, and the raptures they 
 express, are alike indispensable to their production. 
 
 But what shall I say of the prodigious, the 
 gigantic talent of Michael Angelo ! The amount 
 of genius he heaped up and lavished, both as a 
 painter and a poet, on the walls of this unique 
 building, is beyond anything man can measure. 
 
 What a masterly grouping of the events and 
 personages which sum up and symbolise the whole 
 essential history of the human race ! What a 
 wonderful conception is that double row of pro- 
 phets and sibyls, those seers of either sex, whose 
 gaze pierces the darkness of the future, and in 
 whose persons the omniscient Spirit is carried 
 through the ages ! What a volume of teaching 
 is that vaulted ceiling covered with the pictured 
 story of our human origin, and whereon the colos- 
 sal figure of the prophet Jonah, cast out of the 
 belly of the whale, is linked with the triumph of 
 that other Jonah, snatched by the power of His 
 own might out of the darkness of the tomb, and 
 victorious over death itself! 
 
 What a sublime and gorgeous Hosanna seems 
 
74 CHARLES GOUNOD 
 
 to rise from the legion of angels twisting, as it 
 were, and wreathed in ecstasy about the sacred in- 
 struments of His Passion as they bear them across 
 the luminous sky, right up into the highest places 
 of the heavenly glory ; while in the lower spaces 
 of the picture the cohorts of the lost stand out, 
 gloomy and despairing, against the last livid 
 gleams of a light that seems to bid them farewell 
 to all eternity. And on the vault itself again, 
 what an eloquent and pathetic reproduction do 
 we see of our first parents' early days ! What a 
 revelation in that tremendous creative gesture, 
 which gives the " living soul " to the inanimate 
 image of the first man, thus putting him in con- 
 scious relation with the principle of his being ! 
 What a sense of spiritual power in the empty 
 space, so significant in its very narrowness, left by 
 the painter between the finger of the Creator and 
 the form of the creature ; as though he would 
 bid us mark that the Divine will knows neither 
 distance nor impediment, and that for the Deity 
 desire and accomplishment are but one act. 
 
 What beauty in the submissive attitude of the 
 first woman, drawn from Adam's side in his deep 
 slumber, as she stands for the first time before 
 her Creator and Father ! How wonderful is the 
 
ITALY 75 
 
 transport of filial confidence and passionate grati- 
 tude in which she bends before the Hand which 
 beckons, and blesses her, with such calm and 
 sovereign tenderness ! 
 
 But even were I to pause at every step, I could 
 touch no more than the fringe of this wondrous 
 poem, the vastness of which fairly turns one 
 giddy. This huge collection of biblical pictures 
 might almost be called the Bible of the art of 
 painting. Ah ! if young people only guessed what 
 an education for their intelligence, what mental 
 pabulum for all their future, this sanctuary of 
 the Sistine Chapel holds, they would spend their 
 days in drinking in its lessons. Characters formed 
 in such a noble school of fervour and contempla- 
 tion will soar far above any self-interest or regard 
 for notoriety. 
 
 It was my duty to study opera, as well the 
 sacred music of which the services in the Ponti- 
 fical Chapel preserved the best traditions. The 
 operatic repertoire at that date consisted mostly 
 of works by Bellini, Donizetti, and Mercadante. 
 All these, though full of characteristic qualities, 
 and even marked from time to time by the per- 
 sonal inspiration of their authors, were, as their 
 general outline and ensemble will prove, little 
 
76 CHARLES GOUNOD 
 
 more than parasitic creepers round that vigorous 
 trunk, the genius of Rossini. Neither its vigor- 
 ous strength nor its majestic stature were theirs, 
 yet it was often hidden, for the time being, under 
 the passing splendour of their ephemeral foliage. 
 
 There was but little advantage, from a musical 
 point of view, in listening to these operas. The 
 performances were very inferior to those at the 
 Theatre Italien in Paris, where the same works 
 were interpreted by the best artists of the day. 
 The stage-management, too, was often literally 
 grotesque. I remember going to a performance 
 of " Norma," at the Apollo Theatre in Rome, at 
 which the Roman warriors wore firemen's helmets 
 and tunics, and yellow nankeen trousers with 
 cherry -coloured stripes. It was utterly ridicu- 
 lous, and might have been a Punch and Judy 
 show. 
 
 Consequently I did not patronise the theatre 
 much, and found I did far better to study 
 my favourite scores — Lulli's "Alcestis," Gluck's 
 " Iphigenia," Mozart's " Don Giovanni," Ros- 
 sini's " William Tell " — in my own rooms. 
 
 Over and above the time I spent in close 
 companionship with Monsieur Ingres during the 
 famous "tracing" period, I had the good luck 
 
ITALY 77 
 
 to get his leave to watch him in his studio. It 
 may be imagined I made the most of the per- 
 mission. I used to read to him while he was 
 painting, and many a time have I dropped my 
 book and watched him at his work. Thus I 
 had the good fortune to see him resume and 
 finish his exquisite picture " Stratonice," which 
 was acquired by the Due d'Orleans, and also 
 his " Vierge a l'Hostie," intended for Count 
 Demidoff's gallery. 
 
 An interesting incident, of which I was an 
 eye-witness, occurred in connection with this 
 latter picture. In the original composition, the 
 foreground contained, instead of the Pyx with 
 the holy elements, an exquisite figure of the 
 Holy Child lying asleep on a cushion, one hand 
 still holding the tassel with which it had been 
 playing. The exquisite little creature, with its 
 tender plump body, was (or, at all events, 
 seemed to me) a perfect gem, not only in ease 
 and beauty of attitude, but in grace of drawing 
 and charm of colour. 
 
 Monsieur Ingres himself appeared pleased with 
 it, and when the waning daylight forced him to 
 stop painting, I left him well content with his 
 day's work. Next afternoon I went back to the 
 
78 CHARLES GOUNOD 
 
 studio, and, to my horror, the figure was gone! 
 He had destroyed the whole of his work, and 
 removed every trace of it with the palette-knife. 
 
 "Oh, Monsieur Ingres!" I cried in dismay. 
 
 " Well, yes," he said ; and then again decisively, 
 " Yes, I was right ! " 
 
 The glory of the divine symbol had come to 
 him as something higher than the bright human 
 reality of the infant figure, and therefore more 
 worthy of the Virgin's adoration of her Son. 
 He had not shrunk from sacrificing a master- 
 piece to truth. 
 
 This noble choice, this disinterested integrity, 
 stamp him as one of those whose privilege and 
 reward it is to enjoy unquestioned authority as a 
 guide and teacher of man. 
 
 Among my contemporaries at the Academie de 
 France at Rome were a number of young fellows 
 who have grown famous since those days, among 
 them Lefuel, Hebert, and Ballu the architect, all 
 of them members of the Institut de France at 
 this present time, as well as many others who 
 have either gained distinction or been snatched 
 away by an early death before they could realise 
 their country's hopes. I will instance Papety the 
 
ITALY 79 
 
 painter, Octave Blanchard, Buttura, Lebouy, 
 Brisset, Pils, the sculptors Diebolt and Godde, 
 the musicians Georges Bousquet and Aime 
 Maillard — all of them sons of that much-abused 
 Alma Mater which, in succession to Hyppolyte 
 Flandrin and Ambroise Thomas, produced Caba- 
 nel, Victor Masse\ Guillaume, Cavelier, Georges 
 Bizet, Baudry, Massenet, and a host of other 
 eminent artists whose names I might add to 
 this list, already long enough, in all conscience. 
 
 We students were often asked to parties at the 
 French Embassy. It was there I met Gaston de 
 Segur for the first time. He was then an attache, 
 but, as everybody knows, he afterwards became 
 the saintliest of bishops, and, as I thankfully 
 recollect, one of my best and dearest friends. 
 
 Though our headquarters were at Rome, we 
 were allowed and expected to travel about and 
 visit other parts of Italy. 
 
 I shall never forget the impression Naples 
 made on me on my first arrival with my com- 
 rade, Georges Bousquet, now no more. He 
 had won the Grand Prix for music the year 
 before. We had travelled with the Marquis 
 Amedee de Pastoret, who had written the words 
 of the cantata which had won my prize for me. 
 
80 CHARLES GOUNOD 
 
 It all seemed to me like a vision or a fairy 
 tale. The bewitching climate, which sets one a 
 dreaming of Grecian skies ; the sapphire bay, set 
 in its frame of isles and mountains, whose slopes 
 and peaks glow in the sunset with tints so magic 
 and ever changing, that the rarest stuffs and 
 brightest jewels are colourless and dull beside 
 them. All around one the endless wonders of 
 Vesuvius, Portici, Castellamare, Sorrento, Pom- 
 peii, and Herculaneum, of Ischia, Capri, and 
 Posilipo, Amain and Salerno ; and Pactum, with 
 its splendid Doric temples, once lapped by the 
 blue waters of the Mediterranean. 
 
 It was the absolute reverse of the effect pro- 
 duced by the first sight of Rome! Here the 
 charm was instantaneous. 
 
 When to all these natural fascinations we 
 add the interest attaching to the museum (the 
 "Studii" or Museo Borbonico), crammed with 
 a unique collection of masterpieces of antique 
 art unearthed for the most part at Pompeii, 
 Herculaneum, and Nola — cities which lay buried 
 for more than eighteen centuries beneath the 
 lava of Vesuvius — the immense attraction this 
 city presents to any artist may be conceived. 
 
 I was lucky enough to visit Naples thrice 
 
ITALY 8 i 
 
 during my residence in Rome, and among the 
 most vivid and striking recollections I took away 
 with me was my memory of beautiful Capri, so 
 wild and yet so smiling, with its rugged rocks 
 and verdant slopes. 
 
 It was summer time when I first went there, 
 under brilliant sunshine and in torrid heat. The 
 only possible way of existing in the daytime was 
 either to shut oneself up in one's room and try 
 to get a little coolness and sleep in the dark, or 
 else to jump into the sea and stay there, which 
 I was always delighted to do. The beauty of 
 the night in such a climate, and at that season, 
 is well-nigh unimaginable. The vault of heaven 
 literally quivers with stars like an ocean with 
 waves of light, so full does infinite space appear 
 of twinkling tremulous luminaries. During my 
 fortnight's stay I often sat listening to the elo- 
 quent silence of these phosphorescent nights. 
 I would perch myself on some steep rock, and 
 stay for hours gazing out on the horizon, rolling 
 a big stone down the precipitous slope /rom time 
 to time, to hear it bound and bound till it struck 
 the sea below and raised a ruffle of foam. Now 
 and again a solitary night-bird uttered its mourn- 
 ful note, and made me think of those weird 
 
8z CHARLES GOUNOD 
 
 precipices whose horror Weber has rendered 
 with such marvellous power in that immortal 
 incantation scene in " Der Freischutz." 
 
 It was during one of these nocturnal rambles 
 that the first idea for the " Walpurgis Night " in 
 Goethe's " Faust " struck me. 
 
 I never parted with the score ; I carried it 
 about with me everywhere, and jotted down in 
 stray notes any idea which I thought might 
 be useful whenever I made an attempt to use 
 the subject for an opera. This I did not attempt 
 until seventeen years afterwards. 
 
 However, back to Rome and to the Academy 
 I had to go. Pleasant and seductive as Naples 
 was, I never stopped there for any length of 
 time without wanting to get back to Rome. A 
 kind of home-sickness would seize me, and I 
 would leave without a shadow of regret the spot 
 where I had spent so many happy hours. In 
 point of fact, and in spite of all her splendour 
 and prestige, Naples is a noisy, shrill-voiced 
 town, restless and riotous. Her inhabitants 
 squabble and talk and quarrel and argue from 
 dawn till dark, and from dark till dawn, on those 
 quays of hers, where rest and silence are equally 
 unknown. Wrangling is the normal condition 
 
ITALY 83 
 
 of the Neapolitan. You are fallen upon, be- 
 sieged, haunted by the indefatigable persecutions 
 of facchini, shopkeepers, drivers, and boatmen, 
 who would think but little of carrying you off 
 by force, and every one of whom offers to serve 
 you for less money than his fellow. 1 
 
 Once back in Rome, I set seriously to work. 
 This was in the autumn of 1840. 
 
 In spite of her professional duties, which 
 engaged her on week-days from morn till night, 
 my mother still found time to write to me often 
 and fully. She must frequently have cut short 
 her hours of sleep so as to give me this proof of 
 her constant and tender care. The very length 
 of her letters bore sufficient witness to the amount 
 of time, robbed from her nightly rest, she had 
 devoted to them. I knew she had to rise every 
 morning at five, to be ready for her first pupil, 
 who came at six, and that often her breakfast 
 hour was absorbed by another lesson, during 
 which, instead of a proper meal, she would 
 swallow a bowl of soup, or perhaps take nothing 
 but a crust of bread and a glass of wine and 
 water. I knew her daily round lasted till six 
 o'clock every evening, and that after her dinner 
 1 See letter from Gounod to Lefuel, dated July 14, 1840. 
 
84 CHARLES GOUNOD 
 
 she had a hundred and one household duties to 
 attend to. Besides, she had many people to write 
 to as well as me, and, what is more, she was a 
 Dame de Charite, and often worked with her own 
 hands to clothe her poor. Nothing but the com- 
 plete orderliness and method with which she laid 
 out her time could ever have enabled her to do so 
 much ; but those two essential and fundamental 
 qualities, without which life can be neither occu- 
 pied nor useful, were hers in the highest degree. 
 
 But she had quite given up that pestilential 
 habit of " paying visits," which simply means 
 wasting one's time from Monday morning to 
 Saturday night in going to other people's houses 
 and wasting theirs ; killing that time, in fact, 
 which kills those who misuse it with sheer weari- 
 ness. 
 
 And so we were brought up on short but 
 pithy maxims, flung to us, as it were, with the 
 brevity of a woman who could not spare time to 
 chatter. "Waste not, want not," and so forth. 
 
 A family friend once said to me, " Your mother 
 is not one Wonder to me, but two ; I cannot con- 
 ceive how she finds time to do so much, or all 
 the money she gives away." / know well enough 
 how she found both. In her own good sense 
 
ITALY 85 
 
 and powerful will. The more she had to do, 
 the more she did. Just the converse of Emile 
 Augier's clever saying, which has much the 
 same meaning, " I have been so idle, I haven't 
 had time to do a single thing." 
 
 Now and again my dear excellent brother 
 would slip a word of good and friendly advice 
 into my mother's letters to me. I stood much 
 in need of it, for steadiness was never my strong 
 point, I fear ; and weakness, uncounterbalanced by 
 good sense, becomes a power for evil. Alas ! I 
 know too well how little I profited by all his 
 warnings, and I cry, Meet, culpa. 
 
 There is a church in the Corso at Rome, 
 called San Luigi dei Francesi, and served by 
 a French canon and priests. Every year, on 
 the 1 st of May (the feast of the patron saint of 
 Louis-Philippe), a musical Mass was performed 
 there. The duty of writing the music for the 
 occasion devolved on the Academy musical prize- 
 holder for the previous year. The year I went 
 to Rome, the Mass (with full orchestral accom- 
 paniment) was written by my comrade, Georges 
 Bousquet. The following one, it would be my 
 turn. My mother, fearing my other duties at the 
 Academy would not allow me sufficient leisure 
 
86 CHARLES GOUNOD 
 
 to compose so important a work, sent me the 
 Mass I had written for St. Eustache. She had 
 copied it herself from my manuscript score, not 
 caring to let that out of her own keeping or risk 
 losing it in the post. 
 
 My feelings when this fresh token of my 
 mother's goodness and patience reached me at 
 Rome may easily be imagined. However, I did 
 not do what she suggested, for I considered it 
 my bounden duty, as a conscientious artist, to 
 try and do still better work (no difficult matter, 
 indeed), and I worked on stoutly at the new Mass 
 I had begun composing for the King's fete-day. 
 I finished it in due course, and conducted it myself. 
 
 This work brought me luck, and earned me 
 the kindest of congratulations. To it I owe my 
 life appointment of "Honorary Chapel-master" 
 to the Church of San Luigi dei Francesi. Little 
 did I foresee I should be asked to give a per- 
 formance of the work and conduct it in person 
 the very next year in Germany. Later on I 
 will detail the consequences of this second per- 
 formance, and the benefits it brought me. 1 
 
 1 See letter from Gounod to Lefuel, with a postscript from 
 Hubert (dated April 4, 1841), with reference to the performance 
 of this Mass. 
 
ITALY 87 
 
 The longer I stayed at Rome, the more irre- 
 sistible I found the mystic charm and matchless 
 calm that reign within its walls. 
 
 Coming from the jagged, bold volcanic out- 
 line of the crater of Naples, the simple, quiet, 
 solemn lines of the Campagna, framed by the 
 Alban, the Latian, and the Sabine hills, Soracte 
 the majestic, the mountains of Viterbo, Monte 
 Mario, and Janiculum, made me think of some 
 open-air cloister, quiet and serene. The village 
 of Nemi, with its pretty lake sunk in a great 
 crater, and fringed with luxuriant vegetation, was 
 one of my favourite spots near Rome. The 
 walk round the lake by the upper road is one 
 of the most beautiful that can possibly be ima- 
 gined. I shall never forget the beauty of that 
 view, as I had the good luck to see it one 
 lovely day, at the close of which I watched the 
 sun go down into the sea from the heights of 
 Gensano. 
 
 But the neighbourhood of Rome abounds in 
 such exquisite scenes, objects of endless pleasure 
 trips for travellers and tourists — Tivoli, Subiaco, 
 Frascati, Albano, Ariccia, and a hundred other 
 places, the happy hunting grounds of landscape 
 painters, not to mention the Tiber, many spots 
 
88 CHARLES GOUNOD 
 
 on the banks of which are full of majestic beauty 
 and grandeur. 
 
 In this memoir of my youthful days, I must 
 not omit to mention, among the artistic treasures 
 which are Rome's special glory, a set of master- 
 pieces which share with the frescoes of the Sis- 
 tine Chapel the proud boast of being the glory 
 of the Vatican. I mean those immortal pictures 
 by the painter Raphael, forming the collection 
 known as " Le Loggie e le Stanze." In the 
 Stanza della Segnatura hang the immortal can- 
 vases of the "School of Athens" and the " Dis- 
 puta del Sacramento." These two masterpieces, 
 like many others from this unrivalled painter's 
 brush, are of a beauty which appears absolutely 
 unapproachable. 
 
 Yet so irresistible is the ascendency of genius, 
 that this Raphael, this matchless painter whom 
 history has set on the very pinnacle of fame, was 
 himself influenced by Michael Angelo. He felt 
 the mighty Titan's grip, he bowed before the 
 giant's power, and his later works give ocular 
 proof of the homage he paid the sublime and 
 almost supernatural genius that dwelt within that 
 powerful and gigantic brain. 
 
ITALY 89 
 
 Raphael may be the first of painters — Michael 
 Angelo stands alone. In Raphael's case, power 
 expands and blossoms into charm ; in Michael 
 Angelo's, on the other hand, charm seems to 
 subjugate and govern power. Raphael enrap- 
 tures and captivates, while Michael Angelo fasci- 
 nates and overwhelms. One paints the earthly 
 paradise ; the other, like the prisoner of Patmos, 
 gazes with eagle eye even into the recesses 
 of the bright abode of the Archangels and the 
 Seraphim. 
 
 These two great apostles would seem to have 
 been called to stand side by side in the high 
 noontide of art, so that the calm and perfect 
 beauty of the younger might serve to temper 
 the dazzling splendour revealed to the poet- 
 painter of the Apocalypse. 
 
 A detailed description of the innumerable art 
 treasures of Rome would be out of place in these 
 recollections, of which the sole object has been 
 to relate the principal incidents of my early 
 artistic career. 
 
 In the winter of 1840-41 I had the privilege 
 of seeing and hearing the sister of Madame 
 Malibran, Pauline Garcia, who had just married 
 
90 CHARLES GOUNOD 
 
 Louis Viardot, then Director of the Theatre 
 Italien in Paris ; they were, in fact, on their 
 honeymoon. 
 
 She was not yet eighteen, and her first appear- 
 ance on the boards had been a great success. I 
 had the honour and pleasure, in the drawing- 
 room at the Academy, of accompanying her per- 
 formance of the well-known and immortal air 
 from "Robin Hood." I was amazed by the 
 already majestic talent of this mere child, who 
 then promised to be, and eventually became, a 
 great celebrity. 
 
 I did not meet her again until ten years later. 
 It is a curious fact, that at the age of twelve, 
 when I first heard Malibran sing in Rossini's 
 " Otello," I made up my mind to embrace a 
 musical career ; ten years later, when I was 
 twenty-two, I made the acquaintance of her sis- 
 ter, Madame Viardot ; ten years later again, 
 when I was thirty-two, I wrote the part of 
 " Sappho," which she created with such brilliant 
 success on the operatic stage, for the same 
 lady. 
 
 That same winter I had the good fortune to 
 meet Fanny Henzel, Mendelssohn's sister. She 
 was spending the winter at Rome with her hus- 
 
ITALY 91 
 
 band, who was painter to the Prussian court, and 
 her son, who was still a young child. 
 
 Madame Henzel was a first-rate musician — a 
 very clever pianiste, physically small and delicate, 
 but her deep eyes and eager glance betrayed an 
 active mind and restless energy. She had rare 
 powers of composition, and many of the " Songs 
 without Words," published among the works and 
 under the name of her brother, were hers. 
 
 Monsieur and Madame Henzel often came to 
 the " Sunday evenings " at the Academy, and she 
 would sit down to the piano with the readiness 
 and simplicity of one who played because she 
 loved it. Thanks to her great gifts and wonder- 
 ful memory, I made the acquaintance of various 
 masterpieces of German music which I had never 
 heard before, among them a number of the works 
 of Sebastian Bach — sonatas, fugues, preludes, and 
 concertos — and many of Mendelssohn's composi- 
 tions, which were like a glimpse of a new world 
 to me. 
 
 Monsieur and Madame Henzel left Rome to 
 return to Berlin, and there I met them again two 
 years later. 
 
 Before he left the Academy, Monsieur Ingres 
 
92 CHARLES GOUNOD 
 
 was good enough to make me a parting gift, 
 which I value both as a proof of his regard and 
 as a specimen of his talent. He did a pencil por- 
 trait of me, sitting at the piano with Mozart's 
 " Don Giovanni " open before me. 
 
 I was deeply conscious of the loss his departure 
 would be to me, and of how much I should miss 
 the healthy influence of an instructor whose artistic 
 faith was so strong, whose enthusiasm was so in- 
 fectious, and whose teaching was so trustworthy 
 and aimed so high. Every art demands some- 
 thing beyond mere technical knowledge and 
 special handicraft, beyond the fullest, nay, the 
 most absolutely perfect acquaintance with and 
 practice in the various processes. These are 
 absolutely necessary, of course, but they are 
 only the tools with which the artist works, the 
 outward form and envelopment of each particular 
 branch. But in each art there is a something, 
 the exclusive property of none, still common to 
 them all, higher than all, in default of which they 
 fall to the level of mere handicrafts. This some- 
 thing, which, itself unseen, imbues the whole with 
 life and soul — this constitutes the art itself. 
 
 Art is one of the three great transformations 
 which reality, brought into contact with the human 
 
ITALY 93 
 
 mind, and looked at in the ideal and all-powerful 
 light of the good, the beautiful, and the true, is 
 bound to undergo. Art is neither an utter dream 
 nor an exact copy ; it is neither the mere ideal 
 nor the merely real. It is like man himself — the 
 meeting and fusion of the two. It is unity in 
 duality. Inasmuch as it is ideal, it soars above 
 us. Were it only real, it would be below us. 
 Morality is the humanisation, the incarnation of 
 good ; science is that of truth, and art is that of 
 beauty. 
 
 And Monsieur Ingres was a true apostle of the 
 beautiful. It was the breath of his nostrils ; his 
 lectures proved it as well as his works — more so 
 indeed, perhaps ; for, as a man with a strong creed 
 is generally a man full of great longings, the very 
 fervour of those aspirations will often carry him 
 far above the ordinary beaten track. From the 
 heights thus gained he shed as much light on a 
 musician's as on a painter's work, ushering us all 
 into the presence of the universal sources of the 
 highest truths. By showing me the real nature of 
 true art, he taught me more about my own than 
 any number of merely technical masters could 
 have done. 
 
 Though time allowed of my deriving but little 
 
94 CHARLES GOUNOD 
 
 benefit from our invaluable intercourse, yet that 
 little made a permanent impression on me, and 
 left a precious memory to console me for the loss 
 of his actual presence. 
 
 In the month of April 1841, Monsieur Ingres 
 was succeeded by Monsieur Schnetz, a well-known 
 painter, whose success and popularity were mostly 
 earned by his qualities of feeling and expression. 
 He was a kind and amiable man, full of mother- 
 wit, very cheerful and cordial with the students. 
 In spite of a pair of bushy black eyebrows, which 
 lost themselves in a thick head of hair and almost 
 concealed his forehead, Monsieur Schnetz's ex- 
 pression was gentle and good-humoured, and he 
 was the essence of a thoroughly " good fellow." 
 
 My second and third years at the Academy 
 were spent under his rule. He was very fond of 
 Rome, and circumstances helped him to indulge 
 his preference, for he was Director of the- Academy 
 of France three times, and left none but kindly 
 memories behind him. 
 
 By rights my residence in Rome should have 
 ended with the year 1841, but I could not make 
 up my mind to depart, and obtained the Director's 
 permission to prolong my stay. I remained at 
 the Academy five months beyond the regulation 
 
ITALY 95 
 
 period, and did not leave it until forced to move 
 by the fact that the state of my finances only 
 barely permitted my getting on to Vienna, where 
 the money for the first six months of the third 
 year of my scholarship was to be remitted to me. 
 
 I will not attempt to describe my grief at quitting 
 the Academy, at parting with my beloved fellow- 
 students, and leaving Rome itself, where I felt 
 my affections were so deeply rooted. My com- 
 rades accompanied me as far as Ponte Molle 
 (Pons Milvius), and after the most cordial of 
 farewells, I climbed into the post-cart which was 
 to tear me (there is no other word) from my two 
 happy years in that land of promise. 
 
 I should have been less down-hearted had I 
 been going straight home to my beloved mother 
 and brother, but I was faring alone into a country 
 of strangers, of whose very language I was utterly 
 ignorant ; no wonder the outlook was cheerless 
 and dark to me. As long as I could see it from 
 the road, I kept my eyes on the dome of St. 
 Peter's — the crown of Rome and of the universe 
 — then the hills hid it utterly. I fell into deepest 
 musing, and wept like any child. 
 
96 CHARLES GOUNOD 
 
 LETTERS 
 
 I 
 
 Monsieur Lefuel, Artist, Poste Restante, 
 Nice-maritime. 
 
 Rome, 21st June, Monday. 
 
 Dear Good Friend, — As it is much more 
 natural and proper for a child to hasten to answer 
 his father, than a father his child, I will begin by 
 apologising for not having sooner acknowledged 
 your last letter dated from Mantua. But it has 
 been in spite of myself, I do assure you. I have 
 have had a great deal of writing to do lately, and 
 it is not finished even yet. It is really quite a 
 business (and something else as well) to have 
 to thank people in writing for an interest they 
 merely express through a third person, and which 
 you cannot acknowledge in the same coin. How- 
 ever, I ought to be thankful, and I must not turn 
 up my nose at the idea of bestirring myself a 
 little. Otherwise people might say, "Well, it's 
 easy enough to rid him of that trouble." Eh, 
 dear boy ? So I confide this to nobody but 
 yourself and trusted friends like you. 
 
 Let me tell you I have done your commission 
 
ITALY 97 
 
 about that coat of yours, which we had been 
 wandering round and round for ever so long, 
 "getting hot," as they say at hide and seek. It 
 has seen daylight at last, and is none the worse ; 
 no ugly creases, nor moth of any sort. Likewise 
 I gave your friendly messages to our comrades, 
 who all wanted to know where you wrote from. 
 ... I replied that your letter came from Mantua. 
 Whereupon ensued various conversations, both 
 private and general, anent your specially favoured 
 position, especially since a like favour has been 
 refused to Gruyere, who also applied for leave to 
 travel, and declares he brought very good reasons 
 to support his request. I did not choose to talk 
 too much about you, for fear of heating opinions 
 which were already unfriendly, but I did reply at 
 once to a remark made by a person who shall be 
 nameless, to the effect that it was neither very 
 delicate nor very straightforward on your part, 
 last year, to go to Florence in the first instance, 
 when you had been granted permission, by special 
 favour, to go to Naples. 
 
 I combatted that idea with all my might, at 
 the same time refusing to be drawn into a discus- 
 sion which might have degenerated into a dis- 
 pute. And then, dear Hector, if you only knew 
 
 G 
 
98 CHARLES GOUNOD 
 
 how some people's tempers have altered since 
 you went away ! If it goes on, I really believe 
 you will find some individuals with their noses in 
 the air, as people call it. I am not the only 
 person that strikes, and I think it can hardly 
 escape your notice too. 
 
 As to myself, in another ten days I shall start 
 for Naples, and I expect to spend six weeks or 
 two months, not at Naples itself, but in the king- 
 dom and the islands. The month of September 
 I shall probably spend at Frascati, so as to get a 
 good look, and a last one, at that splendid Monte 
 Cavi, of which I am very anxious to make some 
 studies. If you write to me, direct to the Poste 
 Restante at Naples. I will go and fetch my letters 
 when I am in town, and have them sent after me 
 wherever I may be. I have been making a tour, 
 quite lately, in the mountains near Subiaco, Civi- 
 tella, Olevano, &c. I saw much that was beauti- 
 ful, but what interested me most was the Convent 
 of San Benedetto at Subiaco. I saw and felt 
 things there that I shall never forget. 
 
 I have had news from home lately. They are 
 all well, and send you affectionate messages. 
 They tell me Urbain had written you to Genoa, 
 so that you might find the letter there on the 
 
ITALY 99 
 
 15th. I don't know how he makes out you will 
 be at Genoa then, but, anyhow, I fancy his 
 reckoning is at fault. However, the letter had 
 better be there before you than after. You are 
 sure to get it when you leave Milan, or you 
 could, if you liked, have it sent you by some 
 friend. Then my mother says Blanchard has 
 been so excessively kind as to make a small 
 drawing of your portrait for Urbain, which 
 has touched both mother and son immensely. 
 Blanchard, so my mother tells me, has had a 
 bad attack of fever since he got back to Paris, 
 but he is much better now. He has dined with 
 my people several times since his return, and my 
 mother says he is very pleasant, has very nice 
 ways, and she likes him because he strikes her as 
 being very good-natured. 
 
 You doubtless know, if you have come across 
 any French newspaper, that our friend, Jules 
 Richomme, has not been admitted to compete for 
 the Grand Prix. I am very much distressed at 
 the news, for his sake and that of his family, who 
 so greatly desired to see him win the Prize and 
 come to Rome. I am sure now to see him in 
 Paris, for even if he won the Prize next year, he 
 would not start until after my return. And how 
 
ioo CHARLES GOUNOD 
 
 goes your work, my dear fellow? Your port- 
 folios must be getting handsomely filled, me- 
 thinks ! Write me all about it — how you are — 
 what you are doing. Though I'm not absolutely 
 sharp in your line of occupation, I think my 
 eagerness to know about everything that interests 
 and pleases you will rub up my wits to a certain 
 extent, at all events. Anyhow, I put myself into 
 your hands to tell me what you like. So long as it 
 does not bore you nor waste your time, tell on ! 
 
 Farewell, dear Hector. Keep well, and keep 
 me in your affection — that last being a good 
 work, which shall bring you manifold reward ! 
 
 Mind you are as exact in giving me your suc- 
 cessive addresses as I shall be in sending you 
 mine, during my journey and after it. 
 
 I salute you, with all filial fondness. 
 
 Ch. Gounod. 
 
 II 
 
 Monsieur H. Lefuel, Architect, Acade'mie 
 de France, Villa Medicis, Rome. 
 
 Naples, Tuesday, July 14, 1840. 
 My dear Hector, — I wish I could have writ- 
 ten these few lines which I now send you by 
 
ITALY 101 
 
 Murat 1 sooner. But the fact is that up to the 
 present I have barely had time to write a toler- 
 able scrawl to my brother ; and here in Naples, 
 where I made some acquaintances three months 
 ago, my first duty has been to go round and pay 
 calls. However, I hope to have more time to 
 spare in future. I have written to Desgoffe also, 
 and would gladly have done as much by our good 
 Hebert ; please make all sorts of excuses to him 
 for me. He will certainly hear from me direct 
 one of these days, almost at once indeed, for I am 
 thinking, though not quite decidedly as yet, of 
 starting on Wednesday or Thursday in next week 
 to see Ischia and Capri, returning to Naples by 
 Paestum, Salerno, Amalfi, Sorrento, and Pompeii. 
 A twelve days' trip or thereabouts. 
 
 I hope, my dear fellow, your health has been 
 good since I left, — Desgoffe's as well. I beg he'll 
 see you do not work too hard ! It must be very 
 hot now where you are. Here in Naples it is 
 sometimes very close ; to-day, for instance, it is 
 overwhelmingly thundery and oppressive, but the 
 sea-breeze is not unpleasant, and as we live almost 
 on the sea -shore, we get the benefit of it, and 
 make the most of its freshness. 
 
 1 Jean Murat, a Painter, Grand Prix de Rome. 
 
io2 CHARLES GOUNOD 
 
 Naples (I mean the town, of course) bores me 
 more than ever. I am very curious to see Capri 
 and Ischia, and also Psestum. Yesterday at long 
 last I went up to the Camaldoli ; the view is 
 wonderful, especially over the wide expanse of 
 sea. You know how I love the sea. The longer 
 one looks at it, the better one understands that 
 simple horizontal line beyond which one can fancy 
 infinite space stretching away for ever. To-mor- 
 row afternoon at four, if the weather keeps fine, we 
 mean to go up Vesuvius and watch the sunset ; we 
 shall spend the night there, to see the moonlight 
 on the bay, and the sunrise next morning. You 
 see our expedition promises to be delightful. 
 
 The day before yesterday I had a letter from 
 my mother, forwarded from Rome. If it was you 
 who sent it on, dear Hector, accept my best 
 thanks. My mother and my good brother 
 Urbain send you many friendly messages. 
 
 What do you think of Monsieur Ingres's pic- 
 ture ? Write and tell me, or else slip a line into 
 Desgoffe's letter, when he answers mine. Ad- 
 dress your letters to "La Ville de Rome, Quai 
 Santa Lucia, Naples." If I am not there when 
 they arrive, I shall find them when I get back. 
 
 Please tell Hubert that I should much like to 
 
ITALY 103 
 
 have his opinion of Monsieur Ingres's picture as 
 well as yours ; although I can hardly expect to 
 hear from him until I write myself. 
 
 Give my love to my little brother Vauthier, 
 who will not forget me, I hope. Tell Fleury 1 
 how sorry I was not to say good-bye to him 
 before starting, and finally, give all my comrades, 
 individually and collectively, my best wishes, in 
 our time-honoured fashion. 
 
 Farewell, dear Hector. I send you my best 
 love, with all my heart too, for indeed I feel our 
 common exile with threefold bitterness out here. 
 — Your very affectionate 
 
 Charles Gounod. 
 
 Guenepin 2 will write to you in a day or two. 
 He sends you many friendly greetings. He is a 
 very good fellow, and we have had a pleasant 
 journey, although we have never had more than 
 three or four hours in bed. But that's a trifle. 
 When you write, pray let me know if Desgoffe has 
 sent again to fetch my score of " Der Freischutz " 
 from Prince Soutzo's. 
 
 1 Confidential servant, who had then been forty years at the 
 Academy. 
 
 2 Francois Jean Baptiste Guenepin, Architect, Grand Prix de 
 Rome. 
 
io4 CHARLES GOUNOD 
 
 III 
 
 Monsieur Hector Lefuel, Poste Restante, 
 Venice. 
 
 Rome, April 4, 1841. 
 
 Beloved and Revered Parent, 1 — Your afflic- 
 ted child has been racking his poor brain to know 
 where he should write to you, and was beginning 
 in fact to have serious doubts of the reality of the 
 affection his ancient relative professes for him. 
 However, he now rejoices to have learnt through 
 Monsieur Schnetz that the undaunted centenarian 
 has removed himself from Florence to Bologna, 
 on his way to Venice as fast as he can get there. 
 
 To Venice, therefore, does his son, greatly 
 comforted by the joyful news, indite the following 
 epistle to inform him, firstly, that he himself is 
 in rude health, and secondly, that his musical 
 Mass has had a great success, not only among 
 his fellow-students here, but also among the un- 
 initiated vulgar. The thought of his venerable 
 friend's delight at once occurred to the com- 
 poser, and was indeed a potent factor in his 
 legitimate joy in his success. He begs to add 
 that he unceasingly deplores the absence of his 
 
 1 See La Revue of June I, p. 476. 
 
ITALY 105 
 
 aged kinsman, the person he naturally clung to 
 most while he was here, and of whom Fate has 
 so cruelly and inopportunely bereft him. 
 
 I too have news from Paris, my dear good 
 Hector. My letters are full of friendly messages 
 for you. My mother, why, I know not, was 
 under the impression I should see you again 
 within a month or two ; I have undeceived her 
 on that head, and I am very sure she regrets 
 it much. And then you will not have heard the 
 news I have about Urbain, news that gave me 
 a great thrill of joy at first, which changed to 
 deepest disappointment when the end of the 
 paragraph appeared. It was neither more nor 
 less than the idea of his coming out to Sicily 
 and Rome, but it is all off now, and this is 
 why. 
 
 The Marquis de Crillon, who has always taken 
 a great interest in my family, being himself about 
 to travel in Sicily, desired to find a talented and 
 educated artist ; a really earnest man, in fact, to 
 keep him company. He thought of Urbain, so 
 calling at our house one day, he laid his plan 
 before my mother. She thanked him for his 
 goodness, told him how deeply she appreciated 
 his kind thought, and seized the earliest oppor- 
 
io6 CHARLES GOUNOD 
 
 tunity of speaking to my brother. He, after 
 short though serious reflection, made up his mind 
 to accept Monsieur de Crillon's offer. When it 
 came to taking leave of his clients, he saw such 
 long faces everywhere, and the regret at his de- 
 parture was so general — everybody vowed it 
 would be so impossible to find such delicacy, 
 such integrity, and the other good and estimable 
 qualities you know him to possess, in any other 
 man — that getting away began to look far from 
 easy. But there is more besides. Here is what 
 really put the spoke in his wheel. All his future 
 interests were suddenly threatened with com- 
 promise for lack of ten or twelve thousand francs. 
 You will easily imagine that under such circum- 
 stances he was forced to stay in Paris. I am 
 very uneasy about this somewhat critical state 
 of things, and wait impatiently for news of what 
 has happened next. I will let you know in my 
 next letter. Poor Urbain, so good a fellow, who 
 has worked so hard ! Luckily he has plenty of 
 pluck, and will bear the most unpleasant ordeal 
 bravely, but all the same it is very hard on 
 him. 
 
 I had heard, dear Hector, you had written to 
 Gruyere. I was beginning to grow jealous, 
 
ITALY 107 
 
 when Hebert said to me, " Cheer up, it's only 
 about something he wants him to do for him ! " 
 So I took comfort in the hope that I should 
 shortly hear from you myself. I must tell you 
 that the proofs of friendly interest shown me 
 by many of my comrades here, and notably our 
 good little painter Hubert, have made me very 
 happy. I have the keenest sense of gratitude 
 for the care and attention with which I saw him 
 listen to the rehearsal of my Mass. No indiffe- 
 rent person would have bestowed them, and it 
 is always a pleasure to be able to mention a 
 case of sympathetic interest. Knowing your 
 affection for Hubert, I rejoice to tell you this, 
 for I feel sure your regard for him will not be 
 lessened on account of that he bears me. His 
 health is as rude as mine, and, like all the rest 
 of our comrades here, he bids me send you many 
 greetings. I am going to see if he is at home, 
 and try to get him to add a line or two at the 
 end of this letter. 
 
 Bazin has not yet arrived. I haven't an idea 
 what has become of him. I am rather afraid that, 
 in the enthusiasm aroused by his passage through 
 his native place, his fellow-townsmen may have 
 laid violent hands upon his person, and nailed 
 
ro8 CHARLES GOUNOD 
 
 him on a pedestal, as a statue dedicated to his 
 own glory ! They are a hot-headed set at 
 Marseilles, and quite capable of anything of the 
 sort ! He might send himself in as the result of 
 his Academy work ! 
 
 Good-bye, my dear Hector. You know how fond 
 I am of you, so, as the saying is, I salute you on 
 both cheeks and on your left eye likewise. If 
 Courtepee 1 is still with you, tell him I grasp his 
 hand with special fervour. I hope you are full 
 of health and spirits, both of you, and I think 
 if you are having the same weather as we are, 
 you must be doing wonderful good work. Good- 
 bye again, dear friend, — Yours always, 
 
 Charles Gounod. 
 
 My dear Architect, — I seize the opportunity 
 our good musician's letter gives me, to let you 
 know I am alive. Our great sculptor Gruyere 
 has informed me you are struggling with an 
 accumulation of head colds. I trust the sun 
 that shines o'er noble and voluptuous Venice 
 will thaw the ice winter has piled within your 
 brain ! 
 
 You had a great success at the Exhibition. 
 
 1 An Architect — LefuePs " rapin." 
 
ITALY 109 
 
 Everybody was much struck by your drawings, 
 the Ambassador and his wife most of all. I do 
 not mention my own performances ; they are 
 neither important nor well executed enough to 
 be worth writing about. Our celebrated com- 
 poser's Mass has had a great success, both 
 amongst ourselves and with the general public. 
 It was well performed, thanks to the activity he 
 displayed in shaking up all the old sleepy-heads ! 
 If you see Loubens, 1 pray give him my best 
 regards. What have you done with Courtepee ? 
 Can you get him up in the mornings when you 
 get up yourself, you early bird ? 
 
 Farewell ! If I can make myself either useful 
 or agreeable to you, command me. — E. Hubert. 
 
 Murat absolutely refuses to write even two 
 lines. He says he will write later on. 
 
 Charles Gounod. 
 
 That is a lie ! — Murat. 
 
 1 Former student at the Ecole Polytechnique, a friend of 
 Gounod, Hubert, &c. 
 
Ill 
 
 GERMANY 
 
 My natural road from Rome to Germany lay by 
 Florence into Northern Italy, and so eastwards 
 via Ferrara, Padua, Venice, and Trieste. 
 
 Although I did make a halt in Florence, I 
 cannot undertake to give a full description of that 
 city. Like Rome, it possesses an inexhaustible 
 store of art treasures. The UfHzi Gallery with 
 its wonderful Tribune (a very shrine of exquisite 
 relics), the Palazzo Pitti, the Academy, Churches 
 and Convents, all teem with masterpieces. But 
 even here, in lovely Florence, Michael Angelo 
 reigns supreme, from the proud eminence of that 
 wonderful and overwhelmingly impressive Medici 
 Chapel, on which, as on the Vatican at Rome, 
 his genius has stamped its mark — unique, incom- 
 parable, overshadowing every other. 
 
 Wherever Michael Angelo's hand has been, 
 devoutest attention is instinctively aroused ; when 
 the master speaks, all others hold their peace. 
 
GERMANY m 
 
 Nowhere perhaps is the mysterious power of 
 supreme silence more effectually shown than in 
 the awe-inspiring crypt of the Medici Chapel. 
 How tremendous is that figure of the " Pensie- 
 roso" standing there motionless like a silent 
 sentinel over death, awaiting the blast of the 
 last trump ! What repose and grace, too, in 
 the figure of Night, or rather of Sleep, "that 
 knits up the ravelled sleave of Care," beside the 
 robust form of Day lying bound and fettered as 
 it were, till the last dawn shall come. It is the 
 deep meaning hidden in all Michael Angelo's 
 work, as well as the combination of nature and 
 fancy in the attitudes of his statues, which gives 
 them that intensity of expression so specially 
 characteristic of his mighty genius. The huge 
 proportions of his figures are but a type of the 
 deep bed worn by the torrent of his mighty 
 thoughts, and thus it is that any imitation of a 
 form of art which nothing but his genius had 
 power to fill and quicken is foredoomed to seem 
 both pompous and bombastic. But time and lack 
 of funds forbade my tarrying on my road to 
 Germany, so I can do no more than mention 
 Florence, and the pleasant recollections I took 
 away with me. I passed through the deserted 
 
H2 CHARLES GOUNOD 
 
 city of Ferrara, and spent a couple of days in 
 Padua to see the beautiful frescoes of Giotto and 
 Mantegna. 
 
 During my stay in Italy I had made acquaint- 
 ance with the three great cities which are the art 
 centres of that favoured land — Rome, Florence, 
 and Naples. Rome, the City of the soul; Florence, 
 the City of the mind ; Naples, the home of bril- 
 liant sunlight, of wild and dazzling gaiety. 
 
 I was about to make the acquaintance of a 
 fourth, which, like the others, holds a great and 
 glorious place in the history of art. For the 
 geographical position of the city has given Venice 
 and Venetian art a distinct and unique character 
 of their own. 
 
 Cheerful or sad, sunlit pr gloomy, rose-red or 
 deadly pale, smiling or darkly forbidding, each 
 and all by turns, Venice is one perpetual kaleido- 
 scope, a weird mixture of the most contradictory 
 impressions, a pearl, I might almost say, cast into 
 a dark and noisome place. Venice ! she charms 
 like any sorceress ! She is the native haunt of 
 the most radiant form of art. She has cast a 
 flood of sunshine on the painter's canvas ! 
 
 Unlike Rome, which waits your pleasure, draws 
 you slowly onwards step by step, until you fall 
 
GERMANY 113 
 
 into an utter and never-ending thraldom of admi- 
 ration, Venice takes swift hold upon your senses, 
 and fascinates you at one fell swoop. Rome is 
 serene and soothing, Venice heady and exciting. 
 The intoxication of her charms is tinged (it was 
 at least in my case) with a sort of nameless melan- 
 choly, like a captive's sense of loneliness. Is it 
 the shadow cast by the dark deeds of former days, 
 to which the city seems predestined by its very 
 situation? It may be. But whether it be so or 
 not, I cannot fancy any one staying long in this 
 semi-amphibious City of the Dead without grow- 
 ing to feel half choked and plunged into deep 
 depression. With its sleeping waters lapping in 
 dismal silence round the walls of its old palaces, 
 and its gloomy shadows .whence the groan of some 
 murdered noble seems to float, Venice is a city of 
 terror ; disaster hangs around her even now ! 
 
 But yet, in the full sunlight, what can be more 
 fairylike than the Grand Canal, or those glittering 
 lagoons whose waves seem made of liquid light ! 
 What vivid power clings to those relics of departed 
 splendour, which seem to call aloud to the blue 
 sky, beseeching it to save them from the abyss 
 that slowly but surely sucks them down, and will 
 end some day by engulphing them for ever ! 
 
 H 
 
H4 CHARLES GOUNOD 
 
 Rome stands for meditation, Venice for intoxi- 
 cation. Rome is the great Latin ancestress whose 
 conquests are destined to give the world one 
 catholic and universal language — a prelude and 
 a means to another Catholicism, deeper and vaster 
 yet. Venice is a true Oriental — Byzantine, not 
 Greek ; she makes one think much more of 
 Satraps than of Pontiffs, of Eastern luxury rather 
 than of Athenian or Roman dignity. 
 
 Even San Marco, with all its wonders, is more 
 of a mosque than a basilica or a cathedral ; it 
 appeals far more to the imagination than to the 
 deepest feelings of the soul. The splendour of 
 the mosaics and gilding, pouring a stream of dark 
 rich tints from the roof of the dome to its very 
 base, is utterly unique. I know nothing like it 
 either in strength of colouring or powerfulness of 
 ..effect. 
 
 Venice breathes passion, as distinct from love. 
 I was bewitched the moment I arrived, but I left 
 it. without the pang I felt on quitting Rome — a 
 sure sign and measure of the impression each 
 city had produced on me. 
 
 Naples is like a smile from Greece ; the horizon 
 glowing with purple and azure, the blue sky re- 
 flected by the sapphire sea, even the ancient 
 
GERMANY 115 
 
 name, Parthenope, carry us back to that brilliant 
 civilisation on which nature had bestowed such 
 an exquisite setting. But Venice smiles on the 
 traveller in quite a different way. She is coaxing 
 and she is false, like a feast laid out on the 
 trap-door of a dungeon. This doubtless is why 
 involuntarily I felt more relief than regret when 
 I departed, in spite of the masterpieces of art 
 and the mysterious and magic charm I left 
 behind me. 
 
 A steamer bore me to Trieste, where I at once 
 took the stage-coach for Gratz. I halted on my 
 way to visit the curious and wonderful stalactite 
 caverns of Adelsberg ; they are like underground 
 cathedrals. Crossing the Carinthian mountains 
 (whose ragged outline I consigned to my sketch- 
 book), I reached Gratz, and then Olmutz. Thence 
 I went on by railway to Vienna, my first stop- 
 ping place on this German tour which it was 
 my one object to get through as quickly as pos- 
 sible, so as to shorten my exile from my mother's 
 roof. 
 
 Vienna is a very cheerful city. The inhabi- 
 tants struck me as being much more like French- 
 men than Germans. They are full of vivacity, 
 high spirits, good-humour, and gaiety. 
 
n6 CHARLES GOUNOD 
 
 I had brought no letters of introduction with 
 me, and I did not know a single soul. I took 
 up my quarters in an hotel until I should be able 
 to find quieter and less expensive rooms. It was 
 absolutely necessary, as I was to make a stay of 
 some months' duration, to cut my coat accord- 
 ing to my cloth. A travelling acquaintance had 
 strongly advised me to board and lodge in a 
 private family, if possible ; and I soon found an 
 opportunity of putting his advice to a practical 
 test. 
 
 Nothing in the world would have induced me 
 to let my mother stint herself to swell my 
 modest purse ; even had I felt the least inclined 
 to unnecessary expenditure, the thought of her 
 life of toil would have overcome any such temp- 
 tation. Board, lodging, and theatre expenses 
 (which last were a necessary item in my musical 
 education) made up the whole of my necessary 
 outlay, and with due care and economy the 
 amount of my scholarship was quite sufficient to 
 cover that. 
 
 The first thing I saw advertised on the Vien- 
 nese Opera posters was Mozart's " Flauto 
 Magico." I rushed forthwith and took the 
 cheapest ticket I could get, for the very top of 
 
GERMANY 117 
 
 the house. Modest as it was, I would not have 
 bartered it for an empire ! 
 
 It was the first chance I had had of hearing 
 that exquisite score, and I was perfectly en- 
 chanted. It was thoroughly well rendered. Otto 
 Nicolai conducted the orchestra. The Queen 
 of Night was very well played by a singer of 
 remarkable talent, Madame Hasselt Barth ; the 
 High Priest Sarastro by a celebrated artist with 
 a splendid voice, a first-class method, and a 
 magnificent style — Staudigl himself. The other 
 roles, too, were very carefully performed, and I 
 still remember the sweet voices of the boys who 
 appeared as the three Genii. 
 
 I sent in my name (as an Academy student) 
 to the Conductor, and asked if I could see him. 
 He sent for me, and I was conducted to his pre- 
 sence on the stage itself, where he introduced 
 me to the various artists, with whom I kept up 
 pretty close relations from that night out. As I 
 could not speak a single word of German, and 
 as most of them knew little more French, it was 
 not easy to get on at first. While I was stand- 
 ing on the stage, I was lucky enough to make 
 acquaintance, also through Nicolai, with a mem- 
 ber of the orchestra, who spoke French. His 
 
n8 CHARLES GOUNOD 
 
 name was Levy, and he was the leading cornet- 
 player. His son, Richard Levy, then fourteen 
 years old, held the same appointment at the 
 Viennese Opera in later years as his father 
 had before him. He received me in the kindest 
 way, and asked me to call upon him. In a 
 very short time we were firm friends. He had 
 three other children. The eldest, Carl Levy, was 
 a talented pianist and a skilful composer ; the 
 second, Gustave, is now a musical publisher at 
 Vienna ; and the daughter, Melanie, a charming 
 creature, married the harpist Parish Alwars. 
 
 Through his kind offices, after a few weeks' 
 residence in Vienna, I made the acquaintance of 
 Count Stockhammer, one of the most useful 
 friends I found there. He was President of the 
 Philharmonic Society ; and Levy, to whom I had 
 shown the Mass I wrote in Rome, took me to 
 see him, and spoke of the work in very favour- 
 able terms. The Count, with kindly prompti- 
 tude, offered to have it performed in the Church 
 of St. Charles, by the soloists, choruses, and 
 orchestra of the Society. 1 The day fixed was 
 the 14th of September. 
 
 1 See letter from Gounod to Lefuel, under date August 21, 
 1842. 
 
GERMANY it 9 
 
 My work seemed to give general satisfaction, 
 a fact of which Count Stockhammer at once gave 
 me the most substantial proof by asking me to 
 write a Requiem Mass — solos, choruses, and or- 
 chestral accompaniments — to be performed in the 
 same church on All Souls' Day, November 2nd. 
 
 I had a bare six weeks before me. The only 
 chance of getting the work done in time was to 
 toil at it night and day, without rest or intermis- 
 sion. I joyfully agreed to do it, and did not lose 
 a moment in beginning. The Requiem was ready 
 by the appointed date. Thanks to that universal 
 diffusion of musical knowledge which is such 
 a delightful and peculiar feature in Germany, a 
 single rehearsal sufficed to make it all run 
 smoothly. I was particularly struck by the faci- 
 lity with which mere schoolboys read music at 
 sight — as easily as if it were their mother tongue. 
 The choruses, too, were rendered to perfection. 
 Among the soloists was a man of the name ot 
 Draxler, still quite young, with a magnificent 
 bass voice. He and Staudigl were the leading 
 basses at the Opera. I heard some years later 
 that Staudigl had gone mad, and died ; and 
 Draxler, who took his place, still held it when 
 I went back to Vienna in 1868, twenty-five 
 
izo CHARLES GOUNOD 
 
 years after, to produce my opera " Romeo and 
 Juliet." 
 
 Some time before the performance of my Re- 
 quiem, Nicolai had made me acquainted with an 
 eminent composer named Becker, who devoted 
 himself entirely to chamber music. A quartette 
 party met at his house every week, and Holz, the 
 first violin, had known Beethoven very intimately ; 
 a fact which, putting his own talent aside, made 
 him very interesting company. Becker was also 
 considered the most capable musical critic in all 
 Germany at that time. He came to hear my Re- 
 quiem, and published a critique couched in terms 
 of such high compliment as to be an immense 
 encouragement to so young a man as I then 
 was. My score, he said, "though evidently 
 from the hand of a novice whose style is still 
 unformed, and who has scarcely realised whither 
 his powers may lead him, displays a grandeur 
 of conception which is exceedingly rare now- 
 a-days." 
 
 This heavy piece of work, undertaken and 
 carried through within such a short space of 
 time, knocked me up so completely that I fell 
 ill with a violent attack of sore throat, compli- 
 cated with abscesses. Not wishing to frighten my 
 
GERMANY 121 
 
 mother, I confided the true state of my health to 
 nobody except my dear friends the Desgoffes, who 
 were then in Paris. The moment Desgoffe knew 
 I was lying ill in Vienna he left wife, daughter, 
 and the pictures he was painting for the Salon, 
 without a moment's hesitation, and started off to 
 watch by my bedside and nurse me. 
 
 The journey from Paris to Vienna took five 
 or six days at that time. It was now mid-winter, 
 December in fact, and what would have been 
 bad enough in any case at that season, was made 
 far worse by the serious illness my poor friend 
 contracted on the way. When he arrived at 
 Vienna he stood sorely in need of care himself. 
 Yet he spent no fewer than twenty-two days at 
 my bedside, snatching a few moments' sleep on 
 a mattress on the floor, and watching over my 
 every movement with the most motherly care. 
 He only left me and returned to Paris when 
 the doctor had satisfied him that I was com- 
 pletely convalescent. 
 
 Such friendship is not often met with ; but, 
 indeed, Providence has been more than good 
 to me in that respect. 
 
 The success of my Requiem had made me 
 alter my plans as to my stay in Germany, and 
 
122 CHARLES GOUNOD 
 
 I determined to prolong my sojourn in Vienna. 
 Count Stockhammer gave me a fresh commis-' 
 sion on behalf of the Philharmonic Society. This 
 time it was a vocal Mass without accompaniment, 
 to be sung in Lent in the same church, dedicated 
 to St. Charles, my patron saint. I was glad to 
 take this fresh opportunity, not only of gaining 
 practice in my art, but also of getting my work 
 performed — a rare and precious privilege at the 
 opening of any man's career. This was the 
 second considerable piece of work I did at 
 Vienna, and my last. I left that city imme- 
 diately after the performance for Berlin, via 
 Prague and Dresden, in neither of which towns 
 did I stay long. But I felt I must not leave 
 Dresden without visiting that admirable museum 
 which, among other treasures, contains the famous 
 Madonna by Holbein, and that other wonderful 
 Madonna known as the " San Sisto," painted by 
 Raphael's master-hand. 
 
 As soon as I reached Berlin I went, according 
 to her request, to call on Madame Henzel. But 
 within three weeks I was seriously ill again, this 
 time with internal inflammation, and that just 
 when I had written my mother that I was about 
 to start homewards, and that we should soon be 
 
GERMANY 123 
 
 reunited after our weary separation of over three 
 and a half years. 
 
 Madame Henzel at once "sent her own doctor 
 to me, and to him I presented the following 
 ultimatum — 
 
 " Sir, I have a mother waiting for me in Paris, 
 counting the hours till I get back ; if she were 
 to hear I am prevented from getting home by 
 illness, she would probably start off to join me, 
 and she might quite possibly lose her reason on 
 the road. She is getting old. I must make up 
 some • explanation of my delay, but it can only 
 be a very short one. I can only give you a 
 fortnight, either to bury me or set me on my 
 legs again." 
 
 "Very good," quoth the doctor; "if you will 
 make up your mind to obey my orders, you may 
 travel in a fortnight." 
 
 He kept his word ; on the fourteenth day I 
 was out of the wood, and eight and forty hours 
 after I had started for Leipzig, where Mendels- 
 sohn was living, with a letter of introduction to 
 him from his sister, Madame Henzel. 
 
 Mendelsson received me wonderfully — I use 
 the expression advisedly, to describe the con- 
 descension extended by such an illustrious man 
 
124 CHARLES GOUNOD 
 
 to a youth who could not in his eyes have been 
 more than a novice. I can truly say that for 
 the four days I spent at Leipzig he devoted 
 himself to me. He questioned me about my 
 studies and my works with the keenest and sin- 
 cerest interest. He made me play some of my 
 later efforts to him, and gave me precious words 
 of approbation and encouragement. One sen- 
 tence only will I quote ; I am too proud of it 
 ever to have forgotten it. I had just played 
 him the " Dies Irse " from my Vienna Requiem. 
 He laid his finger on a passage written for five 
 voices without accompaniment, and said — 
 
 " My boy, that might have been written by 
 Cherubini ! " 
 
 Such words from such a master are better than 
 any decoration — more precious to their recipient 
 than all the ribbons and stars in Europe. 
 
 Mendelssohn was Director of the "Gewand- 
 haus " Philharmonic Society. As the concert 
 season was over, there were no meetings of the 
 society going on, but he showed me the delicate 
 kindness of calling its members together for 
 my benefit. Thus I heard his beautiful work 
 known as the " Scotch Symphony " in A Minor, 
 and he afterwards gave me the full score en- 
 
GERMANY 125 
 
 dorsed with a few kind words in his own hand- 
 writing. 
 
 Too soon, alas ! the early death of that splendid 
 genius, in the heyday of his beauty and his charm, 
 was to transform this friendly memento into a 
 treasured and precious relic. He died only six 
 months after the charming woman to whom I 
 owed my acquaintance with her gifted brother. 
 
 Mendelssohn did not confine himself to calling 
 the Philharmonic Society together for my benefit. 
 An admirable organist himself, he was anxious 
 I should make acquaintance with some of the 
 numerous and admirable works composed by the 
 mighty Sebastian Bach for the instrument over 
 which he reigned supreme. With this object, he 
 had the old organ at St. Thomas's — the very 
 instrument Bach himself used — examined and 
 repaired, and there for two long hours and more 
 he revealed an unknown world of beauty to my 
 wondering ears. 
 
 Finally, to crown it all, he presented me with a 
 collection of motets by this same Bach, who was a 
 sort of god to him, in whose school he had been 
 formed from infancy, and whose Passion music, 
 "according to St. Matthew," he had conducted 
 and accompanied by heart before he was fifteen. 
 
i26 CHARLES GOUNOD 
 
 Such was the kind treatment I received at the 
 hands of that most lovable of men, that splendid 
 artist, that magnificent musician, cut off, alas ! 
 in the flower of his age (just eight-and-thirty), 
 snatched from the plaudits he had earned so well, 
 and from the yet more glorious results the later 
 efforts of his talent might have yielded. Strange 
 is the fate of genius, even when endued with the 
 charm possessed by his ! It was not till Mendels- 
 sohn himself was dead that the ears which would 
 not hearken in his lifetime learnt to appreciate 
 the exquisite works which are now the joy and 
 delight of every subscriber to the Conservatoire 
 concerts. 
 
 Once I had seen Mendelssohn I could think 
 of nothing except of getting back as fast as pos- 
 sible to Paris and to my beloved mother. I left 
 Leipzig on May i8, 1843. I changed carriages 
 seventeen times on the road, and travelled four 
 nights out of six. At length, on May 25, I 
 reached Paris, where my life was to enter on a 
 new and different phase. I found my brother 
 waiting for me when the mail-coach arrived, and 
 together we hurried to that beloved home into 
 which I was about to carry so much new happi- 
 ness, and return to so much that I had left behind. 
 
IV 
 
 HOME AGAIN 
 
 Whether my three and a half years of absence 
 had wrought a mighty change in my appearance, 
 or my last illness (still very recent) and the stains 
 of travel had played havoc with my looks, I know 
 not, but anyhow my mother did not recognise 
 me when I arrived. True, I had a budding beard, 
 but such a slight one, that any one might have 
 counted every hair. 
 
 During my absence my mother had left the 
 Rue de l'Eperon, and settled down in the Rue 
 Vaneau, in the parish known as " Les Missions 
 Etrangeres," the church of which stands at the 
 corner of the Rue du Bac and the Rue de 
 Babylone. There a post awaited me which was 
 to fill up my time for several years to come. 
 The priest of this parish, the Abbe Dumarsais, 
 had formerly been chaplain at the Lycee St. 
 Louis. His predecessor at the Missions Etran- 
 geres was the Abbe Lecourtier. 
 
128 CHARLES GOUNOD 
 
 While I was in Rome at the Academie de 
 France, the Abbe Dumarsais had written to offer 
 me, on my return, the appointment of organist 
 and chapel-master to his parish. This I had 
 accepted, but under certain conditions. I had no 
 notion of taking any advice, and still less any 
 orders, on musical matters, from priest or parish 
 authorities, or anybody else. I had my own ideas, 
 my own opinions, my own convictions. In short, 
 I meant either to have my own way about the 
 music, or not have anything to do with it. That 
 was flat. However, my conditions were accepted, 
 and all should have gone smoothly. 
 
 But old habit is hard to break. My predecessor 
 had accustomed the worthy parishioners to a 
 style of music quite different from that which I 
 had brought back with me from Rome and Ger- 
 many. Palestrina and Bach were deities in my 
 eyes, and I was casting down the idols they were 
 accustomed to worship. 
 
 The means at my disposal were almost nil. 
 Besides the organ — a small and very inferior 
 instrument — I had two basses, a tenor, and one 
 choir-boy, without reckoning myself, who was 
 chapel-master, organist, singer, and composer all 
 in one. I had to do my best with what I found 
 
HOME AGAIN 129 
 
 to my hand, and the necessity which forced me 
 to use these very modest resources to the best 
 possible advantage was of real benefit to me in 
 the long run. Things went on well enough at 
 first, but I guessed, from a sort of coldness and 
 reserve I noticed, that I was not altogether in 
 the good books of the congregation. I was not 
 mistaken. About the end of my first year of 
 office, the priest sent for me, and confided to 
 me that he had to endure many complaints and 
 reproaches from his flock. Monsieur or Madame 
 So-and-so did not consider the musical part of 
 the service the least bit cheerful or entertaining. 
 He therefore suggested to me to "change my 
 style," and to " give in to them a little." 
 
 "My dear Abbe," I said, "you know our 
 bargain. I didn't come here to consult the taste 
 of your parishioners, but to improve it. If they 
 don't like my 'style,' as you call it, there is a 
 simple way out of the difficulty. I will resign, 
 you can reappoint my predecessor, and everybody 
 will be satisfied. The matter is entirely in your 
 own hands." 
 
 "Very well," said the Abbe; "all right. I 
 
 accept your resignation." 
 
 Thereupon we parted the best of friends. I 
 
 1 
 
i3° CHARLES GOUNOD 
 
 had not been home for more than half an 
 hour when the Abbe's servant knocked at my 
 door. 
 
 " Well, Jean, what is it ? " 
 
 " Sir, Monsieur Abbe" would like to see you." 
 
 "Oh, really! All right, Jean; say I will come 
 in a moment." 
 
 When I met the Abbe he began again on the 
 same subject. 
 
 "Come, come, my dear boy, it is a word and 
 a blow with you really and truly ! Is there no 
 middle course ? Do let us consider the matter 
 calmly. You went off like a sky-rocket this 
 morning ! " 
 
 "My dear Abb6, there is not the slightest 
 use in beginning it all over again. I stick to 
 everything I have said. If I am to notice the 
 objections of this person or that, I may just as 
 well give up trying to do anything at all. Either 
 I stay with a perfectly free hand, or else I go. 
 Those are my conditions, as you know, and I 
 will not alter them one jot." 
 
 " Oh dear ! oh dear ! " he said, " what a terrible 
 fellow you are ! " And then after a pause, " Well 
 then, you had better stop ! " 
 
 From that day forth he never mentioned the 
 
HOME AGAIN 131 
 
 subject again, and left me absolute liberty of 
 action. Little by little, my bitterest opponents 
 became my warmest supporters, and the increas- 
 ing sympathy of my hearers soon caused my 
 modest salary to swell. I had begun with 1200 
 francs a year, which was not a large sum. The 
 second year my pay was increased by 300 francs; 
 the third I had 1800, and the fourth 2100 francs. 
 But I must not anticipate. 
 
 We lived, my mother and I, in the same house 
 as the Abbe. Another priest, three years older 
 than myself, who had been a schoolfellow of mine 
 at the Lycee St. Louis, resided under the same 
 roof — the Abbe Charles Gay. In the ordinary 
 course of events, the disparity of our ages and 
 his seniority in the school would have prevented 
 any intimacy between us, even if we had happened 
 to be acquainted with each other. However, our 
 common taste for music had brought us together 
 at the Lycee. Charles Gay, who was then about 
 fourteen, had very remarkable musical aptitude, 
 and used to take the second soprano parts in the 
 choruses ; he was also one of the most brilliant 
 scholars at the college. He concluded his studies, 
 and I lost sight of him for three years. I met 
 him again in the Foyer at the Opera one night, 
 
132 CHARLES GOUNOD 
 
 when " La Juive " was being played. I knew him 
 at once, and accosted him. 
 
 "Hallo!" he said, "is that you? And what 
 are you doing with yourself?" 
 
 " I have gone in for composing." 
 
 "Really!" he said. "So have I. Who are 
 you working with ? " 
 
 " With Reicha." 
 
 "Why, so am I. This is delightful; we must 
 see a lot of each other ! " 
 
 Thus it was that our schoolboy friendship was 
 renewed, and still remains one of the strongest of 
 my life. 
 
 I had the greatest admiration for my friend, 
 who possessed musical powers of the very highest 
 order, and whose talent, as I freely recognised, 
 far surpassed my own. His compositions struck 
 me as being full of genius, and I envied him the 
 career I felt sure the future had in store for him. 
 I often spent my evenings in his rooms, where 
 there was always plenty of music going on. His 
 sister was an excellent pianiste, and besides his 
 own compositions (which we often used to try 
 over, among his intimate friends), trios by Mozart 
 and Beethoven were frequently given. 
 
 One day I received a note from my friend (who 
 
HOME AGAIN 133 
 
 was out of town) asking me to come and see him, 
 as he had something interesting to tell me. My 
 first thought was that he was going to be married ; 
 but when I reached his house, he told me he was 
 anxious to enter the Church. This explained all 
 the folios and other big books I had for some 
 time remarked lying about on his table. I was 
 too young then to grasp the meaning of so 
 sudden a change, and I regretted his decision to 
 sacrifice such a smiling future to a life which 
 seemed to me devoid of charm. 
 
 Meanwhile he made up his mind to pay a visit 
 to Rome, and there begin his theological studies. 
 I myself had just won the Grand Prix, which 
 necessitated my going to Rome for two years. 
 So it fell out that I met my friend again, he 
 having arrived some three months before myself. 
 When I came back from Germany, luck brought 
 us together again by settling us under the same 
 roof. 
 
 The Abbe Gay has now been a priest for more 
 than thirty years, and is the Vicar-General of his 
 intimate friend the Bishop of Poitiers. 1 Not his 
 virtues only, but his talents as a speaker and a 
 
 1 Since writing the above the Abbe" Gay has become Bishop of 
 Poitiers himself. 
 
134 CHARLES GOUNOD 
 
 writer too, have brought him the reputation of 
 being one of the most eminent ornaments the 
 French clergy boasts. 
 
 Towards the third year of my duties as chapel- 
 master, I myself felt a certain leaning towards an 
 ecclesiastical career. Besides my musical studies, 
 I had dabbled somewhat in philosophy and theo- 
 logy, and had even attended the theological 
 lectures at the seminary at St. Sulpice all through 
 one winter, wearing the dress of an ecclesiastical 
 student. 
 
 But I had utterly mistaken my own nature and 
 my proper vocation. I felt, after a time, that 
 existence without my art was quite impossible for 
 me, so, casting off the garb which suited me so 
 ill, I went back into the world again. To this 
 youthful phase of mine, however, I owe a friend- 
 ship which I make it a point of honour to record 
 in this chronicle of my life history. 
 
 During the summer of 1846 I was ordered, 
 with the Abbes Dumarsais and Gay, to take sea 
 baths at Trouville. One day I had a narrow 
 escape from drowning, and so quickly did the 
 press get hold of the fact, that the news was 
 published next morning even in the Paris papers. 
 Luckily I had lost no time in writing to tell my 
 
HOME AGAIN 135 
 
 brother I was safe, so he was able to calm my 
 mother's fears by showing her my letter. The 
 papers had calmly announced that " I had been 
 brought home dead on a shutter!" Truly the 
 flimsiest truth travels slower than the weightiest 
 lie ! We chanced during this sea-bathing trip to 
 come across a worthy Abbe walking on the beach 
 with a boy, who was his pupil. This boy, some 
 twelve or thirteen years of age, was named Gaston 
 de Beaucourt. His mother, the Comtesse de 
 Beaucourt, owned a fine property some leagues 
 from Trouville, between Pont l'Ev£que and 
 Lisieux. She invited us, in the most courteous 
 and kindly way, to go and stay there before 
 returning to Paris. 
 
 That charming and lovable boy, now a man 
 of three-and-forty, and one of the best that ever 
 lived, became my lifelong friend, to whose affec- 
 tion, sure and strong and tender, I owe not only 
 the happiness our perfect mutual comprehension 
 brings, but many a precious proof of the deepest 
 and most unselfish devotion. 
 
 The Revolution of 1848 had just broken out 
 when I resigned my post as chapel-master of the 
 Missions Etrangeres. My duties during the four 
 and a half years I held it had served me admir- 
 
136 CHARLES GOUNOD 
 
 ably in the development and improvement of my 
 musical education ; but they were not calculated 
 to advance my career to any practical extent, for 
 they kept me vegetating in a corner, as it were. 
 There is only one road for a composer who de- 
 sires to make a real name — the operatic stage. 
 The stage is the one place where a musician can 
 find constant opportunity and means of communi- 
 cating with the public. It is a sort of daily and 
 permanent exhibition where his works can be 
 perpetually on view. 
 
 Religious and symphonic music no doubt rank 
 higher, in the strictest sense, than dramatic com- 
 position ; but opportunities for distinction in that 
 highest sphere are very rare, and can only affect 
 an occasional audience, not a regular and syste- 
 matic one like the opera-going public. Then, 
 again, look at the huge variety of subject which 
 lies before the dramatic author ! What scope for 
 fancy, for invention ! what endless plots ! 
 
 The stage tempted me irresistibly. I was 
 nearly thirty, and eager to try my fortune on the 
 fresh field I dreamt of. But I had no libretto, 
 and I knew nobody whom I could ask to write me 
 one. Then I had to find an impresario willing to 
 employ me and trust me with a commission ; and 
 
HOME AGAIN 137 
 
 who was likely to do that, in face of the un- 
 doubted fact that my previous training had been 
 mostly confined to sacred music, and that I knew 
 nothing about the stage ? Altogether I was in 
 a fix. 
 
 But fortune led me to a man who soon shed 
 light upon my path. This was the violinist 
 Seghers, who then managed the concerts of the 
 Societe Ste. Cecile, in the Rue de la Chaussee 
 d'Antin. Some compositions of mine had been 
 performed at these concerts, and very favourably 
 received. Seghers was a friend of the Viar- 
 dots. Madame Viardot was then at the zenith 
 of her talent and reputation — this was in 1849, 
 just when she had created the r6le of Fides in 
 Meyerbeer's " Le Prophete " with such tremen- 
 dous success. Madame Viardot received me with 
 the utmost kindness, and suggested my letting her 
 hear some of my work. I complied, of course, 
 with the greatest delight. We spent a long time 
 at the piano, and after listening to me with the 
 kindest attention, she said — 
 
 " But, Monsieur Gounod, why do you not write 
 an opera ? " 
 
 " Indeed, Madame," I replied, " I would gladly 
 do so, but I have no libretto." 
 
138 CHARLES GOUNOD 
 
 " But surely you know somebody who could 
 write you one ? " 
 
 "Oh yes, no doubt I do; but 'could' and 
 ' would ' are very different words ! I know, or 
 rather when I was a child I used to know, Emile 
 Augier ; we trundled our hoops together in the 
 Luxemburg. But since those days Augier has 
 grown famous, and I have remained in my native 
 obscurity. I hardly think my old playmate would 
 care to join me in anything more risky than a 
 hoop race ! " 
 
 "Very well," said Madame Viardot, "go and 
 see Augier, and tell him that if he will write the 
 libretto I will sing the principal part in your 
 opera." 
 
 My readers may fancy I did not wait to be told 
 that twice. I tore off to Augier, who accepted 
 my suggestion with enthusiastic delight. 
 
 "What! Madame Viardot!" he cried. "I 
 should rather think so ! I will set to work at 
 once ! 
 
 Nestor Roqueplan was then impresario at the 
 Opera. He was quite willing, on Madame Viar- 
 dot's recommendation, to give up part of an even- 
 ing's performance to my work, but he could not, 
 he said, spare more. So we had to look for a 
 
HOME AGAIN 139 
 
 subject which would combine three essential points 
 — (1) brevity, (2) interest, (3) a central female 
 figure. We pitched on the story of Sappho. The 
 opera could not, in any case, be put into rehearsal 
 till the following year ; besides, Augier had to 
 finish a big work he was then employed on. It 
 was, I believe, his " Diane," for Mademoiselle 
 Rachel. 
 
 At all events I held a formal promise, and 
 I awaited the event with mingled impatience 
 and calm. Just as I was about to set to work, 
 a crushing blow fell on me and mine. This 
 was in April 1850. Augier had just finished 
 the poem of "Sappho." My brother was taken 
 ill on the 2nd ; on the 3rd I signed my agreement 
 with Roqueplan, whereby I undertook to hand 
 him over the score of " Sappho " by September 30 
 at latest. This allowed me six months to com- 
 pose and write a three-act opera, my maiden 
 dramatic effort. On the night of the 6th of April 
 my brother breathed his last. It was a fearful 
 grief to my old mother and to all of us. 
 
 My brother left a widow, with a child of two 
 years old, and the prospect of another. It was 
 born seven months later, opening its baby eyes 
 on this sad world on the very day when the Church 
 
140 CHARLES GOUNOD 
 
 joins us in mourning the memory of our beloved 
 dead. 
 
 These sad circumstances induced many diffi- 
 culties and complications which demanded close 
 and immediate attention. The guardianship of 
 the children, the carrying on of my brother's busi- 
 ness as an architect (for his death left much work 
 still unfinished), every possible consequence, in 
 fact, of such a sudden and unforeseen disaster, 
 forced me to devote my time for quite a month 
 to safeguarding the interests and arranging for 
 the future of my unhappy sister-in-law, whose 
 grief had quite prostrated her, physically and 
 mentally. Besides all this, my poor mother nearly 
 lost her reason under the stunning blow which 
 had fallen on her. Every circumstance, both 
 personal and external, seemed combined to unfit 
 me utterly for an undertaking for which the time 
 at my disposal already seemed so insufficient. 
 
 Within about a month, however, I was able to 
 think seriously of making the beginning which was 
 growing so urgently necessary. Madame Viardot, 
 who had been on tour in Germany, and whom I 
 had informed of the sad trouble we were in, wrote 
 at once to urge me to take my mother with me 
 and settle down for a while at a country place of 
 
HOME AGAIN 141 
 
 her own in the neighbourhood of La Brie, where, 
 she said, I should have the quiet and calm I 
 needed. 
 
 I took her advice, and my mother and I started 
 for Madame Viardot's house, where we found her 
 mother (Madame Garcia, widow of the famous 
 singer), a sister of Monsieur Viardot's and a girl, 
 his eldest child, who is now Madame Heritte, and 
 a composer of considerable note. There, too, I 
 met a most delightful man, Ivan Tourgueneff, the 
 celebrated Russian author, a close and intimate 
 friend of the Viardot family. 
 
 I set to work at once. Though — strange fact ! 
 — the feelings which had been so lately torn by 
 painful emotion might naturally have been ex- 
 pected to find their first expression in sorrow- 
 laden and pathetic strains, just the reverse took 
 place. The first ideas that came to me were full 
 of gaiety and brightness, and they filled all my 
 brain, as if my inner nature, crushed down by 
 grief and mourning, felt the need of some re- 
 action, and longed to draw a breath of happier 
 life after my long hours of anguish and days of 
 tears and bitter mourning. 
 
 Thanks to the calmness of the atmosphere 
 around me, my work progressed much faster than 
 
142 CHARLES GOUNOD 
 
 I had dared to hope. After her German tour, 
 Madame Viardot's engagements took her to 
 England, whence she returned in the beginning 
 of September, and found my labour nearly com- 
 pleted. I hastened to play her my work, of 
 which I anxiously desired her opinion. She 
 was quite satisfied with it, and in the course 
 of a few days she knew the score so well, 
 that she was able to accompany the whole of it 
 by heart. This is about the most wonderful 
 musical feat I ever witnessed, and gives some 
 idea of the extraordinary powers of that splendid 
 musician. 
 
 " Sappho " was performed for the first time on 
 April 16, 185 1, just before my thirty-second birth- 
 day. It was not a success, but, all the same, it 
 earned me a good position in the opinion of con- 
 temporary artists. It does indeed betray a lack 
 of theatrical instinct, a want of knowledge of stage 
 effect, and of the resources of an orchestra, and 
 some ignorance in handling it. But, on the other 
 hand, the expression is true in feeling, the appre- 
 ciation of the subject, from the lyrical point of 
 view, is fairly exact, and the general style of 
 treatment is distinctly dignified in tendency. The 
 finale of the first act produced an effect which 
 
HOME AGAIN 143 
 
 fairly astonished me. It was loudly and unani- 
 mously encored. I could hardly believe my ears, 
 though they were tingling with the unaccustomed 
 emotion, but the encore was repeated at every 
 subsequent performance. 
 
 The effect of the second act was not so good 
 as that of the first, in spite of the success of an air 
 sung by Madame Viardot, and of the light duet, 
 " Va m'attendre, mon maitre," sung by Bremond 
 and Mdlle. Poinsot. But the third act made a 
 very good impression. The goatherd's song, 
 " Broutez le thym, broutez mes chevres," was 
 encored, and Sappho's final stanza, " O ma lyre 
 immortelle," were loudly applauded. 
 
 The cowherd's song gave the tenor Aymes his 
 first opportunity of appearing in public ; he sang 
 it beautifully, and thereby laid the foundation of 
 his reputation. Gueymard and Marie took the 
 parts of Phaon and Alcee. 
 
 My mother was present, of course, at the first 
 performance of my opera. As I passed along 
 one of the corridors on the way from the stage 
 to the auditorium, where I was to meet her after 
 the crowd had dispersed, I came upon my friend 
 Berlioz, his eyes still wet with tears. I threw 
 my arm round him, and said — 
 
144 CHARLES GOUNOD 
 
 "Oh, dear Berlioz, come and show those wet 
 eyes of yours to my mother. No newspaper 
 paragraph about my opera will make her half so 
 proud." 
 
 He granted my request, and said to her — 
 
 " Madame, I do not think anything has touched 
 me so much for the last twenty years." 
 
 He afterwards published a notice of my opera, 
 which I still regard as one of the most flattering 
 and precious I have ever had the delight and 
 honour of receiving. 
 
 " Sappho" was only acted six times. Madame 
 Viardot's engagement was almost over, and her 
 place in the opera was taken by Mdlle. Masson, 
 who only sang the part three times. 
 
 I think it may safely be laid down as a general 
 principle, that a theatrical work always, or almost 
 always, has the public reception it really de- 
 serves. Theatrical success so inevitably depends 
 on a variety of small details, that the failure of 
 any one — of the merest accessories even — may 
 (as has frequently happened) counterbalance, and 
 perhaps utterly compromise, the effect of the 
 finest qualities of conception and performance. 
 Staging, ballet, scenery, dresses, book, fifty 
 things go to make or mar an opera. The public, 
 
HOME AGAIN 145 
 
 if its interest is to be kept alive, demands con- 
 stant " variety." Many works of the very 
 highest merit in some respects, have failed, not 
 in rousing the admiration of true artists, but in 
 winning popular favour, simply through their 
 lack of this "spice," so indispensable to that 
 class of the public which is not content with the 
 simple charm of intellectual beauty. 
 
 I do not for a moment desire to claim the 
 benefit of this excuse for my " Sappho." The 
 public's right of passing judgment on any work 
 offered to it is based on a prerogative peculiar 
 to itself, and conferring special competence. It 
 would be unfair to ask or expect it to possess 
 that specific knowledge which would enable it 
 to decide as to the technical value of a work of 
 art. But, on the other hand, the public has a 
 distinct right to expect and demand that a play 
 or opera should satisfy those particular instincts 
 the satisfaction and gratification of which it seeks 
 within the playhouse walls. The success of a 
 dramatic work then does not depend solely on 
 the quality of its form and style. Both are no 
 doubt essential — nay, indispensable — to save it 
 from the rapid ravages of Time, whose scythe 
 spares naught that is not essentially true and 
 
 K 
 
146 CHARLES GOUNOD 
 
 beautiful. But form and style are not its only, 
 nor even, in a sense, its strongest support. They 
 may and do strengthen and solidify success ; 
 they cannot make it. 
 
 The theatre-going public is a sort of dyna- 
 mometer. It has nothing to do with the question 
 of whether the play is in good taste or not. 
 Its sole duty is to gauge what constitutes the 
 true essence of every dramatic work — the strength 
 of passion and the degree of emotion it expresses ; 
 its rendering, in fact, of the feelings which sway all 
 human souls, individually and collectively. The 
 consequence is, that author and audience become 
 unconscious instruments in their mutual artistic 
 education. The public is the author's criterion 
 and measure of truth ; the author serves his 
 public as an exhibitor of the elements and condi- 
 tions of the beautiful. This explanation is the 
 only one, to my mind, which can account for 
 the mysterious and incessant changes in public 
 taste. What was madly sought for yesterday 
 is neglected to-day ; one evening will see men 
 ready to tear to pieces the very thing the next 
 morning will see them worshipping on bended 
 knees. 
 
 Though not exactly a success, "Sappho "brought 
 
HOME AGAIN 147 
 
 me some solid advantage, both present and future. 
 On the very night of the first performance, 
 Ponsard asked me to undertake the choral music 
 for " Ulysse," a tragedy in five acts which he was 
 just bringing out at the Theatre Francais. I 
 agreed at once, although I did not know the play. 
 It was quite enough for me to have the chance 
 of collaborating with the author of " Lucrece," of 
 "Charlotte Corday," and of "Agnes de Meranie." 
 I felt quite safe. Arsene Houssaye was then at 
 the head of the Comedie Francaise. He was 
 obliged to add a chorus to the ordinary staff, and 
 increase the orchestra as well. 1 
 
 "Ulysse" was played on June 18, 1852. I 
 had been married a few days previously to a 
 daughter of Zimmerman, 2 the distinguished Pro- 
 fessor of the Piano at the Conservatoire. To 
 his school we owe Prudent, Marmontel, Goria, 
 Lefebure-Wely, Ravina, Bizet, and many other 
 fine musicians. By this marriage I became 
 brother-in-law to the young painter, Edouard 
 Dubufe, who was even then successfully follow- 
 ing in his father's footsteps. His son, Guillaume 
 
 1 See letter from Berlioz to Gounod, dated November 19, 
 1851. 
 * See letter from Gounod to Lefuel, undated. 
 
148 CHARLES GOUNOD 
 
 Dubufe, seems, at the time I write, to be likely 
 to maintain the reputation of his forefathers right 
 worthily. 
 
 The principal parts in "Ulysse" were filled 
 by Mademoiselle Judith, Messieurs Geffroy, 
 Delaunay, and Maubant, Mademoiselle. Nathalie, 
 and others. The musical portion of the per- 
 formance consisted of no less than fourteen 
 choruses, one tenor solo, several melodramatic 
 instrumental passages, and an orchestral over- 
 ture. There was a certain risk of monotony in 
 the general effect, as the composer was limited 
 to orchestra and chorus ; but I was fortunate 
 enough to avoid the difficulty /airly well, and 
 this second work of mine earned me fresh good- 
 will in the artistic world. No publisher had 
 offered to publish the score of "Sappho," but 
 that of " Ulysse " was more favoured. Messieurs 
 Escudier did me the honour and the kindness 
 of printing it free of charge. 
 
 " Ulysse " had a run of forty performances. 
 It was the second ordeal, as regards dramatic 
 composition, through which my mother had 
 watched me pass. The choruses of " Ulysse," 
 as far as I can judge them, are fairly correct 
 in character and expression, and are marked by 
 
HOME AGAIN 149 
 
 a distinctly personal style. The orchestral treat- 
 ment still fails from lack of experience, more than 
 in actual colour, the general feeling for which 
 strikes me as being fairly good. 
 
 A few days after my marriage I was appointed 
 Superintendent of Instruction in Singing to the 
 Communal Schools of the City of Paris, and 
 Director of the Choral Society connected with 
 them, in the place of Monsieur Hubert, himself 
 the pupil and successor of Wilhem, the original 
 creator of the said society. 
 
 This post I held for eight years and a half, 
 and its duties were of the greatest service to me, 
 musically speaking. They taught me to direct 
 and utilise large masses of vocal sound, so as to 
 develop the maxim of sonority under very simple 
 methods of treatment. 
 
 My third musical venture on the stage was 
 " La Nonne Sanglante," an opera in five acts, 
 by Scribe and Germain Delarigne. Nestor 
 Roqueplan, who was still Director of the Opera, 
 had taken a fancy to "Sappho" and to me. I 
 was capable, so he declared, of doing great things, 
 and at his wish I wrote a five-act piece for the 
 Opera. " La Nonne Sanglante " was written in 
 1852-53, rehearsed for the first time on October 
 
ISO CHARLES GOUNOD 
 
 1 8, 1853, put aside and rehearsed again several 
 times over, and finally saw the footlights on 
 October, 18, 1854, just a year after the first re- 
 hearsal. It was only acted eight times. Roque- 
 plan was succeeded as Director of the Opera by 
 Monsieur Crosnier, and as the new chief declared 
 he would not allow "such stuff" to be acted, 
 "La Nonne Sanglante" disappeared from the 
 bills, and has never shown her face again. 
 
 It was rather a grief to me. The very respect- 
 able figure reached by the receipts certainly did 
 not warrant such drastic and summary treatment. 
 But directorial decisions sometimes, so I have 
 heard it whispered, have hidden motives which 
 it is vain to try and discover. In such cases the 
 real reason is concealed, and some other pretext 
 put forward. 
 
 I cannot say whether " La Nonne Sanglante" 
 would have had any permanent success — I am in- 
 clined to think not. Not that the work was poor 
 in effects ; there were some most striking situa- 
 tions. But the subject is too uniformly gloomy. 
 It had the drawback, too, of having a plot that 
 was more than fanciful or improbable ; it was 
 downright impossible, and depended on a purely 
 imaginary situation, utterly false, and therefore 
 
HOME AGAIN 151 
 
 devoid of dramatic interest, which cannot exist 
 without truthfulness, or at all events something 
 approaching thereto. 
 
 I think, in the matter of orchestration, I made 
 a forward stride in "La Nonne Sanglante." 
 Some parts show an increased knowledge of in- 
 strumentation, and seem to bear the impress of a 
 firmer hand. There is good colour in many 
 scenes — such, for instance, as the Crusaders' 
 Hymn, with Peter the Hermit and the chorus, in 
 the first act ; the symphonic prelude in the ruins, 
 and the Ghosts' March, in the second ; the tenor 
 air and the duet with the Nun, in the third. 
 
 The principal parts were played by Mesdemoi- 
 selles Wertheimber and Poinsot, and Messieurs 
 Gueymard, Depassio, and Merly. 
 
 I solaced my disappointment by writing a sym- 
 phony (No. 1 in D) for the Soci6te des Jeunes 
 Artistes, which had just been started by Pasde- 
 loup, and which held its concerts in the Salle 
 Herz, in the Rue de la Victoire. This symphony 
 was so well received that I wrote another (No. 2 
 in E flat) for the same society. It too achieved 
 a certain success. 
 
 About the same time I composed a Solemn 
 Mass for St. Cecilia's Day, which was successfully 
 
152 CHARLES GOUNOD 
 
 performed for the first time on November 22, 
 1855, by the Association des Artistes Musiciens, 
 in the Church of St. Eustache, and has often 
 been given since. I dedicated this Mass to the 
 memory of my father-in-law Zimmerman, whom 
 we had lost on October 29, 1853. 
 
 Yet another misfortune overtook our family ; on 
 August 6, 1855, death snatched away my wife's 
 elder sister, Juliette Dubufe, wife of Edouard 
 Dubufe the painter, a rare and gifted creature, 
 full of charming qualities, and of exceptional talent 
 as a sculptress and a pianiste. " Goodness, wit, 
 talent" — these are the words inscribed upon her 
 tomb ; a simple epitaph, but eloquent in its sim- 
 plicity and well deserved, fitly expressing as it 
 does the honour and regret showered on the 
 memory of an exquisite nature, the charm of which 
 fell irresistibly on all who approached her. 
 
 Nearly all my time was taken up with the 
 management of the Choral Society. I wrote a 
 number of things for the big concerts of this 
 institution. Some were very well received ; 
 among others two Masses, one of which had been 
 performed under my direction on June 12, 1853, 
 at the Church of St. Germain l'Auxerrois in 
 Paris. During one of these great annual meet- 
 
HOME AGAIN 153 
 
 ings of the Choral Society, on Sunday, June 8; 
 1856, my wife presented me with a son. (Three 
 years before, on the 13th of the same month, 
 we had mourned the loss of our eldest child, a 
 girl, who was born dead). On the morning of 
 the day when my boy was born, my brave wife 
 contrived to hide her sufferings from me until I 
 left home for the. concert ; and on my return in 
 the afternoon, I found my son had opened his 
 eyes upon the world. 
 
 The birth of this child, which I had deeply 
 longed for, was a joy and a blessing to us both. 
 He has been mercifully spared to us, is now over 
 one-and-twenty, and hopes to be a painter. 
 
 Since the withdrawal of "La Nonne Sang- 
 lante " I had done no dramatic work ; but I had 
 written a short oratorio, called "Tobie," which 
 George Hainl (then conductor of the orchestra 
 at the Grand Theatre at Lyons) had asked me 
 to compose for one of his annual benefit concerts. 
 This oratorio, as it strikes me, has certain quali- 
 ties both of sentiment and of expression. Some 
 attention was attracted by a somewhat touching 
 air for the youthful Tobias, and by several other 
 passages which had a good deal of pathos about 
 them. In 1856 I made the acquaintance of Jules 
 
iS4 CHARLES GOUNOD 
 
 Barbier and Michel Carre. I suggested to them 
 to collaborate with me, and trust me with a lib- 
 retto. They agreed to do so in a very friendly 
 way. The first subject I put forward for colla- 
 boration was " Faust." The idea pleased them 
 both. We went to see Monsieur Carvalho, at 
 that time Director of the Theatre Lyrique, in 
 the Boulevard du Temple. He had just brought 
 out Victor Masses " Reine Topaze," in which 
 Madame Miolan-Carvalho had achieved a strik- 
 ing success. Monsieur Carvalho approved of 
 our notion, and my two friends set to work at 
 once. I had myself done about half my share 
 of the work, when Monsieur Carvalho suddenly 
 informed me that the Theatre de la Porte Saint 
 Martin was on the point of bringing out a melo- 
 drama under the name of " Faust," and that this 
 fact completely upset his calculations with regard 
 to our work. He rightly thought we should 
 never be ready before the Porte Saint Martin, 
 and even so, it would be imprudent to enter into 
 competition with a theatre whose well-known 
 splendour as to mise en seine would draw half 
 Paris just before our piece appeared. 
 
 He therefore begged us to choose some other 
 subject, but this sudden upset made it impossible 
 
HOME AGAIN 155 
 
 for me to turn my thoughts into another channel, 
 and for more than a week I was unable to do any 
 work at all. 
 
 At last Monsieur Carvalho asked me to write 
 a comic opera, and to take my subject from 
 Moliere. This was the origin of the " Medecin 
 malgre lui," which was produced at the Theatre 
 Lyrique on January 15, 1858, the anniversary 
 of Moliere's birth. 
 
 The announcement of a comic opera from the 
 pen of a musician whose former ventures had 
 been in such a different style seemed to bode 
 disappointment. But these fears (some of them 
 were hopes perhaps ?) were not justified by the 
 event, for the " Medecin malgr6 lui" was, malgrd 
 cela, my first really successful opera. 1 
 
 But all my delight was shattered by the death 
 of my poor mother. She had been ill for some 
 months, and completely blind for two years pre- 
 viously. She died on January 16, 1858, the very 
 day after the first performance, aged seventy- 
 seven years and a half. Fate did not permit me 
 to brighten her last days with the fruit of my 
 labour, and the just recompense of the life she 
 
 1 See letter from Gounod to one of his brothers-in-law, Monsieur 
 Pigny. 
 
i5 6 CHARLES GOUNOD 
 
 had so unceasingly devoted to her children and 
 their future. I can only hope that before she 
 left us she knew and foresaw that her struggle 
 had not been in vain, and that her self-sacrifice 
 had brought a great reward. 
 
 The " Medecin malgre' lui " had an uninter- 
 rupted run of a hundred nights. The work was 
 staged with the greatest care. Monsieur Got, of 
 the Comedie Frangaise, was good enough, at the 
 request ol the Director, to bestow his invaluable 
 advice as to the traditional mounting of the piece 
 and the declamation of the spoken dialogue. 
 The chief part, that of Sganarelle, was played 
 by the baritone Meillet, whose voice was full 
 and round, and his play spirited. He made a 
 great success both as a singer and an actor. 
 The other male parts were taken by Girardot, 
 Wartel, Fromant, and Lesage (the two latter 
 afterwards replaced by Potel and Gabriel), and 
 all in the very best manner. The two principal 
 ladies' parts were held by Mesdemoiselles Faivre 
 and Girard, both of them full of life and anima- 
 tion. 
 
 This score, the first comic work I ever did, is 
 in a light and easy style which savours of the 
 Italian opera-bouffe. I have endeavoured to 
 
HOME AGAIN 157 
 
 recall the style of Lulli in certain passages, but 
 the work as a whole keeps to the modern forms, 
 and belongs to the French school. Among the 
 numbers which most took the public taste were 
 the "Chanson des Glouglous," excellently sung 
 by Meillet, and invariably encored ; the "Trio de 
 la Bastonnade," the " Sextuor de la Consulta- 
 tion," a "Fabliau," the "Scene de Consultation 
 des Paysans," and a duet for Sganarelle and the 
 nurse. 
 
 The Porte-Saint-Martin " Faust " had just been 
 brought out ; but all its magnificent staging did 
 not ensure the melodrama a very long run. 
 Monsieur Carvalho consequently reverted to our 
 former plan, and I at once set to work upon 
 the opera which I had laid aside to write the 
 " Medecin." 
 
 My "Faust" was first put into rehearsal in 
 September 1858. Before I left Paris for Switzer- 
 land, where I was to spend the holidays with my 
 wife and son, then two years old, I had gone 
 through the work with Monsieur Carvalho in 
 the Foyer of his theatre. At that time nothing 
 had been settled as to the cast, and Monsieur 
 Carvalho had asked my leave to bring his wife, 
 who lived opposite the theatre, to hear me play 
 
158 CHARLES GOUNOD 
 
 over the work. She was so struck with the rdle 
 of Marguerite, that Monsieur Carvalho begged 
 me to let her sing it. I was naturally only too 
 delighted, and the result proved my decision to 
 have been something like an inspiration. 
 
 All the same, the rehearsals of "Faust" were 
 not fated to pursue " the even tenor of their 
 way " without many checks and difficulties. The 
 tenor who was to have played "Faust," although 
 gifted with a beautiful voice and a handsome 
 presence, turned out not to be equal to so heavy 
 a part. A short time before the date fixed for 
 the first performance, it became necessary to find 
 some one to take his place ; and the part was 
 offered to Monsieur Barbot, who happened to 
 be disengaged. Within a month Barbot had 
 mastered it and was ready to perform. So the 
 opera was acted for the first time on March 19, 
 1859. 
 
 Though " Faust " did not strike the public very 
 much at first, it is the greatest theatrical success 
 I have ever had. Do I mean that it is the best 
 thing I have written? That I cannot tell. I 
 can only reiterate the opinion I have already 
 expressed, that success is more the result of a 
 certain concatenation of favourable elements and 
 
HOME AGAIN 159 
 
 successful conditions, than a proof and criterion 
 of the intrinsic value of a work. Public favour 
 is attracted in the first instance by outward 
 appearances ; all inward and solid qualities can 
 do is to retain and strengthen it. It takes some 
 time to grasp and absorb the innumerable details 
 which go to make up a drama. 
 
 Dramatic art is a branch of the art of por- 
 traiture ; its function is to delineate character, 
 as that of the painter is to present feature and 
 attitude. Every lineament, all those momentary 
 and fleeting inflections which constitute that in- 
 dividual physiognomy known as a " personality," 
 must be grasped and reproduced. Shakespeare's 
 immortal figures of Hamlet, Richard III., Othello, 
 and Lady Macbeth are so true to the type which 
 each expresses, that they hold a real and living 
 place in every mind. Well may they be called 
 "creations." 
 
 Dramatic music is ruled by the same laws, and 
 cannot otherwise exist. Its object, too, is to 
 portray feature ; but where painting conveys an 
 impression at a glance, music has to tell its story 
 by degrees, and thus often fails to produce the 
 intended effect at a first hearing. 
 
 None of my previous works could have led the 
 
1 6° CHARLES GOUNOD 
 
 world to expect anything like " Faust " from me ; 
 it was a surprise to the public, both as to style 
 and interpretation. 
 
 Of course the part of Marguerite was not the 
 first in which Madame Carvalho had found scope 
 for that marvellous style and power of execution 
 which have set her in the highest place among 
 contemporary singers ; but no previous role had 
 given her so fine an opportunity of displaying the 
 lyric and pathetic side of her gifts. Her Mar- 
 guerite made her reputation in this respect, and 
 will always be one of the glories of her brilliant 
 career. Barbot sang the difficult part of Faust 
 like the great musician he is. Balanque, who 
 created the part of Mephistopheles, was a clever 
 actor, whose gesture, appearance, and voice ad- 
 mirably suited that weird and diabolical person- 
 age. Although he somewhat overacted the part, 
 he made a great success. The smaller parts of 
 Siebel and Valentine were very creditably per- 
 formed by Mademoiselle Faivre and Monsieur 
 Raynal. 
 
 As to the score itself, it raised such a whirl- 
 wind of debate and criticism, that my hopes of a 
 real success grew faint indeed. 
 
HOME AGAIN 161 
 
 LETTERS 
 
 I 
 
 Monsieur H. Lefuel, Poste Restante, Genoa. f % 
 
 (If Monsieur Lefuel does not call for his letters 
 at Genoa, kindly forward to the Academie de 
 France at Rome.) 
 
 Vienna, Monday, August 21, 1842. 
 
 My dear Hector, — Some week or so ago I 
 had a letter from Hebert, to whom I had written 
 in the first instance from Vienna. He tells me 
 you are somewhere near Genoa, but cannot ex- 
 actly tell me where. As you have consistently 
 neglected me, my dear fellow, all through my 
 travels, and as I found no news of you at either 
 Florence, Venice, or Vienna, I was obliged to 
 ask a mutual friend whether he happened to 
 know your address and could let me have it. 
 From Hebert 's answer I gather he has been 
 luckier than I. He knew your whereabouts at 
 anyrate, and could write to you, and get news of 
 you. Yet you were perfectly well aware, hateful 
 old monster that you are, that your sorrowing 
 relation would have rejoiced over even the 
 veriest line from you. But not a scratch of 
 
i6a CHARLES GOUNOD 
 
 your pen have I seen all through my journey. So 
 how was I to write to you ? I longed to always, 
 and you never gave me a chance of doing it ! As 
 likely as not, this letter will arrive and find you 
 flown, which accounts for the extreme precautions 
 you may observe in the directions on my envelope. 
 
 If I were anywhere within reach, I should 
 have a real good row with you. What on earth 
 are you thinking of? Has your patriarchal ten- 
 derness waxed so faint that you feel no temp- 
 tation to write your eldest-born a few of those 
 inspiring sentences he so deeply values ? Even 
 supposing you had not had time to write, I might 
 at all events have kept you posted about many 
 matters which interested me then, and do so 
 still, and which would not have been indifferent, 
 I think, to you. 
 
 However, now I have had my grumble, dearest 
 and best of friends and patriarchs, I will forget 
 your crimes, and grant you my hearty pardon. 
 I know right well how you detest all letter- 
 writing ; I know, too, that you never waste your 
 time. That fact was made so clear to me at 
 Rome, that I never dreamt of putting down your 
 silence to laziness. So I will forget everything, 
 except our mutual friendship. 
 
HOME AGAIN 163 
 
 I have wanted for some time to let you hear 
 of a bit of good fortune I have had here. The 
 Mass I wrote in Rome, for the King's fete-day 
 at San Luigi de Francesi, is to be performed, 
 with full orchestra, here in Vienna, on the 6th 
 of September. This is a piece of luck which 
 has never fallen in the way of any other Academy 
 student, and has only come in mine through 
 my having made acquaintance with some kindly 
 artists, who have introduced me to others who 
 have special influence here. 
 
 I am working very hard ; I see very few 
 people, and seldom go out. I am up to the eyes 
 in a Requiem with full orchestral accompaniment, 
 which will probably be performed in Germany on 
 November 2. The officials of the church where 
 my Roman Mass is to be given have already 
 offered to have my Requiem done as well. But 
 as I am not yet quite certain whether I shall 
 think the rendering of the Mass satisfactory, I 
 give no decided answer for the present. Through 
 my acquaintance with Madame Henzel and with 
 Mendelssohn, I might be able to secure a far 
 finer performance of the work in Berlin, and this 
 would have the advantage of raising me much 
 higher in the opinion of my brother artists. 
 
1 64 CHARLES GOUNOD 
 
 But my hands are still quite free as regards the 
 Vienna performance. If I am satisfied with the 
 way my Mass is given on September 8, I shall let 
 them do the Requiem here ; if not, I shall take it 
 to Berlin. When Madame Henzel was in Rome, 
 she said to me, " When you come to Germany, my 
 brother might be of the greatest use to you, if you 
 have any music you wish to have performed." 
 
 I wrote to her to Berlin some days ago, and 
 as I mean to leave this on September 12, and 
 make a tour through Munich, Leipzig, Berlin, 
 Dresden, and Prague, I asked her to be good 
 enough to tell me if she thought I might hope 
 to get any of my music performed in Berlin. 
 When I get her answer, I shall see my way 
 clearer. If she says yes, I shall stop in Berlin 
 until the beginning of November, and then go 
 straight back to Paris ; if she says no, I shall 
 return to Vienna, to which place the railway 
 would get me back in four days. There is a 
 line from Vienna to Olmutz, which would save 
 me about sixty leagues. If I have to stop in 
 Berlin for my Requiem, I shall travel by a dif- 
 ferent route ; thus, Munich, Prague, Dresden, and 
 Leipzig to Berlin. In any case I will let you 
 know, as soon as I know myself. 
 
HOME AGAIN 165 
 
 I often regret our beautiful Rome, my dear 
 Hector, and cordially do I envy those who have 
 the luck to be there still. I really think my 
 recollection of that lovely land is the chief charm 
 and happiness of my present life. If you only 
 knew what all the other countries I have travelled 
 through look like after Italy ! 
 
 The last thing I saw, and it made a deep and 
 lasting impression on me, was Venice. You know 
 all its beauties, so I will not go into long descrip- 
 tions or ecstasies of admiration. You know all 
 my feelings on the subject. 
 
 No doubt, dear friend, you have heard of the 
 death of our comrade Blanchard. Deeply as I 
 regret him, I know your grief is greater still, 
 for you knew him far better even than I did. 
 Such shadows are well-nigh sure to fall on every 
 meeting after prolonged separation, and, common- 
 place as it may sound, there is something terribly 
 indispensable about that word which closes every 
 letter one writes. 
 
 Farewell, dear friend, farewell ! I greet you 
 as friend greets friend, nay, more, as brother 
 greets brother. I hope we, at least, may meet 
 again ! Good-bye. — Ever yours, 
 
 Charles Gounod. 
 
1 66 CHARLES GOUNOD 
 
 II 
 
 Monsieur Charles Gounod, 47 Rue 
 Pigalle, Paris. 
 
 November 19. 
 
 My dear Gounod, — I have just gone through 
 your choruses for " Ulysse " with the greatest 
 care. The work as a whole seems to me to have 
 considerable merit, and the interest of the music 
 rises as that of the drama intensifies. The double 
 chorus of " the Banquet " is exceedingly good, 
 and will make a powerful effect if properly per- 
 formed. I do not think the Comedie Frangaise 
 can or will be at all stingy in the matter of your 
 orchestra. The music alone, to my mind, will 
 suffice to draw the public for a considerable 
 number of nights, and it should therefore be to 
 the direct and pecuniary interest of the Director 
 that a large proportion of what is laid out on 
 producing the play should be allocated to the 
 musical part of the work. I think this will turn 
 out to be the case. At the same time, do not 
 give an inch on the matter. Get what you 
 want, or take nothing at all. Be very careful 
 who you give your solos to ; one bad singer will 
 utterly spoil the chances of a whole song. 
 
HOME AGAIN 167 
 
 Look at the page I have turned down ; there 
 is a mistake in the time, just at the opening of 
 a verse, which I think you would be wise to 
 alter. Men like you and me oughtn't to scan 
 like that. We must leave that sort of thing to 
 people who don't know their work. Best and 
 sincerest good wishes. — Yours always, 
 
 H. Berlioz. 
 
 Ill 
 
 Monsieur Hector Lefuel, 20 Rue du 
 Tournon, Paris. 
 
 My dear Hector, — I called on you about a 
 month ago to tell you a very important piece 
 of news, which you, in your well-earned quality 
 of friend and " father," have a right to know 
 before anybody else. I am to be married next 
 month to Mademoiselle Agnes Zimmerman. We 
 are all as pleased as we can be, and I believe 
 we may look forward to very solid and lasting 
 happiness. My future wife's family is very good 
 and kind, and I am lucky enough to be a general 
 favourite there already. 
 
 I know, dear friend, you will be the first to 
 congratulate me on this new and happy prospect. 
 But our joy must be tinged with sadness when 
 
1 68 CHARLES GOUNOD 
 
 we think of the memories it must bring back 
 to our poor Marthe, 1 who still mourns the love 
 she prized so much and lost so soon. God grant 
 the sisterly affection my wife will give her may 
 atone for the pangs the sight of our new-found 
 happiness may cause her ! I feel quite sure I 
 may hope for this, for their two sweet natures 
 are strongly drawn to each other even now. 
 
 Good-bye, dear Hector. Always yours most 
 affectionately. My best regards to Madame 
 Lefuel. Charles Gounod. 
 
 IV 
 
 Monsieur Pigny, 2 Rue d'Enghien, Paris. 
 Lucerne, Tuesday, August 28, 1855. 
 My dear Friend Pigny, — In my mother's 
 letter, received to-day, she speaks with deep and 
 grateful emotion of your more than filial devotion 
 to her since my departure, and of the kindly care 
 with which you offered to see personally to all the 
 details of her move from the country. It is a con- 
 siderable undertaking for an old lady like her, in 
 spite of her simple wants and habits. 
 
 1 His widowed sister-in-law. 
 
 2 An architect, who had married another daughter of Zimmer- 
 man's. 
 
HOME AGAIN 169 
 
 You who worship two mothers, so they tell 
 me — self-sacrifice and renunciation (I use these 
 names advisedly ; I can find no other epithets to 
 express my meaning) — will understand me when 
 I tell you that what you do for her is the very 
 tenderest and best thing you can do for me, for 
 you help and complete a work I can never ac- 
 complish to my fullest satisfaction — I mean the 
 endeavour to repay a tithe of the care, the sacri- 
 fices, the anxiety, the devotion she has lavished 
 on me through many years of noble, patient, 
 faithful toil. We have filled all her life, in fact, 
 and she, alas ! can only fill a part of ours. 
 
 I assure you, dear Pigny, I am most deeply 
 touched by this proof that you already treat me 
 as your friend. Apart from the universal affec- 
 tion in which all here hold you, nothing could 
 give you greater claim and title to mine than 
 the delicate deference and kindness you have 
 so gracefully shown my honoured and beloved 
 mother. Charles Gounod. 
 
LATER LETTERS OF 
 CHARLES GOUNOD 
 
 1870-1871 
 
LATER LETTERS OF 
 CHARLES GOUNOD 
 
 1870-1871 1 
 I 
 
 Varangeville, Sunday, September 4. 
 
 My Dears, — As you may well imagine, our 
 dear grandmother is very uncertain as to what 
 she should do. You know kind Louisa Brown 
 has written pressingly and repeatedly to offer 
 grandmamma a home at Blackheath until she 
 can settle down, and the invitation is specifically 
 extended to you as well as to ourselves. 
 
 My own responsibility weighs heavy on me at 
 this juncture. Persuasion or dissuasion strike me 
 as being equally serious in their results. I should 
 like to know dear Pigny's mind on the subject. 
 As to my own ideas, here they are. 
 
 1 With the exception of the fifth and eighth, which are addressed 
 to Edouard Dubufe, these letters were written to Monsieur and 
 Madame Pigny. The reader is doubtless aware that Pigny the 
 architect, Dubufe the painter, and Gounod, married three daughters 
 of Zimmerman the musical composer. 
 
174 CHARLES GOUNOD 
 
 If cruel fortune gives Prussia the victory (no 
 easy matter, as it seems to me), and if France is 
 to be humiliated under a foreign conqueror, I 
 should never have courage, I confess, to go on 
 living under the enemy's yoke. 
 
 Well, granting the Emperor's captivity, Mac- 
 Mahon's defeat, and our loss of eighty thousand 
 men to be undoubted and accomplished facts, my 
 first duty, as it strikes me, is to convey our 
 mother, my wife, and my two children to London, 
 as a provisional arrangement. Speak, then, good 
 Pigny ! I hearken with all my ears ! 
 
 II 
 
 8 Morden Road, Blackheath, London. 
 
 Yes, my dear fellow, you are perfectly right ! 
 The peace proposals Prussia dreams of are a 
 crying shame. But the shame, thank God, lies 
 wholly with the proposing party. They bring 
 glory to those who reject them. 
 
 Like you I feel, I will not say humiliated, but 
 cut to the very heart by the horrible misfortunes 
 which have befallen our poor unhappy France. 
 So much so, that I keep wondering, every hour 
 of the day, whether the duty of those who are 
 
LATER LETTERS 175 
 
 called to the honour and happiness of defending 
 our country is not less heavy than that you and 
 I have to perform, and which no man would 
 choose if he felt he must blush for the per- 
 formance of it. Alas ! dear friend, this once, at 
 all events, in history, Frenchmen in general have 
 spilt their noble blood so gallantly, that the shame 
 of those who only think of their own personal 
 safety clings to themselves alone. But the glory 
 of victory nowadays (for the first time, perhaps, in 
 this world's history) is won by machinery rather 
 than by men, and disasters will be weighed in 
 the same balance. The Prussians have not been 
 braver than we. We have been less fortunate 
 than they. 
 
 You know already, and I say it again, if you 
 decide to re-enter any gate of Paris, I will not 
 let you go alone. Family life means something 
 more than mere family dinner ! 
 
 Well, here we are at last, dear friend, in our 
 new dwelling, after eighteen days spent in the 
 enjoyment of the simplest and sincerest hospi- 
 tality. Some Englishmen there are who will not 
 let us Frenchmen feel we are in England. The 
 manner in which our good and kind friend Brown 
 has shared our trouble proves it. 
 
176 CHARLES GOUNOD 
 
 But the external peace we have found here 
 gives us no inward calm. The longer this 
 horrible bloody war of pride and extermination 
 lasts, the more do I feel my very heart-strings 
 wrung with grief for my unhappy country ; and 
 anything that seems to rouse me from my sad 
 contemplation of our beloved France, far from 
 comforting me, as with kindness, stings like an 
 insult. 
 
 Oh, most unhappy earth ! wretched home of 
 the human race ! where barbarism not only still 
 exists, but is taken for glory, and permitted to 
 obscure the pure and beneficent rays of the only 
 true glory in existence, the glory of love, of 
 science, and of genius ! Humanity yet lingers, 
 it would seem, under the grim shadows of 
 chaos, amidst the monstrosities of the iron age ; 
 and instead of driving their weapons into the 
 earth to benefit their fellow-creatures, men plunge 
 them into each other's hearts to decide the owner- 
 ship of the actual soil. Barbarians ! savages ! 
 
 Ah, dear fellow, let me make an end, or I shall 
 go on for ever, for very sorrow ! 
 
 The dear ones near me, who are dear to you 
 too, are well. Would we could have hidden them 
 a little less far off — in Paris ! 
 
LATER LETTERS 17^ 
 
 III 
 
 8 Morden Road, Blackheath Park, London, 
 Wednesday, October 12, 1870. 
 
 Dear Friends, — As our correspondence is the 
 only thing we have left to help us struggle against 
 the pain of separation, we ought, so far as circum- 
 stances permit, to make the most of it ; for we 
 cannot be sure, alas ! that what can be done to-day 
 will be possible to-morrow. So we have settled 
 with grandmamma that we will write in turn, as 
 long as you are at Varangeville. My turn falls 
 to-day. 
 
 I have just seen a French newspaper, dear Pi, 
 which reports that the Sous-Prefet of Dieppe has 
 posted an order forbidding any Frenchman under 
 sixty years of age to leave the country. So that 
 you are now interned in France, not by your own 
 will only, but by order of the authorities. But as 
 I am not in France, and as I left before any such 
 prohibition was published, I should like you to let 
 me know whether this order is accompanied by 
 another, which seems to me its inevitable corol- 
 lary, or rather its cause, and its logical explana- 
 tion — I mean the calling out of all able-bodied 
 
178 CHARLES GOUNOD 
 
 men under sixty years of age. For I fail to 
 understand an order not to leave France, as 
 applied to men who are not to be called on to 
 defend the country. So I beg you will send me 
 the best-authenticated information you can come 
 by. I will not let you carry a rifle without 
 shouldering mine alongside of you ; and though 
 I am a poor shot, you need not fear my being so 
 clumsy as to shoot you by accident. We must 
 be side by side, if there is any question of either 
 of us going under fire. I have already told you 
 so, and my own inaptitude for military duty has 
 nothing to do or to say in the question. I have 
 looked on the steps I have taken, up to this, as 
 an absolute duty. That duty would become 
 merely relative, consequently less, and therefore 
 null and void, if another and a greater should 
 appear to over-ride it. 
 
 Our poor beloved country is in a very serious 
 position — worse, as far as I can see, than in any 
 previous trial. Never before have the two great 
 problems of external struggle and internal union 
 loomed so urgent or so huge. I feel certain that 
 internal union, in the face of the common enemy, 
 does actually exist. Whether it is merely tem- 
 porary, or whether it will continue after the 
 
LATER LETTERS 179 
 
 struggle is over— whatever may be its issue — 
 that's the question ! Victor or vanquished, will 
 France emerge a republic? In any case — what- 
 ever the resistance Paris makes, and her ultimate 
 fate — it will be long, I think, before France is 
 utterly devoured. The mouthful is a large one, 
 and it may not turn out altogether easy to 
 break up. 
 
 Well, we all send our affectionate love. All 
 friendly messages to your kind hosts, and my 
 affectionate respects to M. le Cure, whom I shall 
 never forget. 
 
 IV 
 
 October 19, 1870, 12.30 p.m. 
 
 My Dear Ones, — We are just going out with 
 Mrs. Brown, who is coming in her carriage to 
 take us to the Crystal Palace. The fountains 
 play to-day for the last time this season, and she 
 has set her heart on our seeing them. As you 
 may fancy, dear Pigny, I shall hardly realise what 
 is going on before my eyes. I can see nothing 
 but our country. I see it clearer, more inces- 
 santly than when I was within its borders ! 
 
 Ah ! dear friend, will no one rise up and lead 
 our brave -hearted Frenchmen on some steady 
 
180 CHARLES GOUNOD 
 
 line of conduct? Failing that, even the most 
 heroic courage will avail us nothing. See how, 
 one by one, one after the other, as though by 
 some strange unheard-of fate, they all fall into 
 the jaws of that huge automaton, that monstrous 
 hydra-headed artillery ! Every one of them 
 founders in that hostile ocean, dashing gallantly 
 and ceaselessly against that ever-growing moun- 
 tain of cannon, and shot, and shell, and strange 
 engines of war, and battalions that seem to start 
 ready armed out of the earth wherever the enemy 
 chances to need them ! and meanwhile our gene- 
 rals are being dismissed, or moved from one 
 command to another, — they are left without 
 orders, and thrown on their own resources, to 
 take the chance of whatever their private or 
 personal inspiration may dictate. Three thou- 
 sand men cut up, to the last man, in a desperate 
 hopeless defence of the Orleans railway station, 
 all unconscious that the opposing force numbers 
 five-and-thirty thousand ! ! Surely it is sheer 
 madness thus to cast the blood, and bravery, and 
 downright heroism of these splendid fellows into 
 the outer darkness of what fate (or is it mere 
 chance ?) may bring ! 
 
 We ought all to be standing face to face with 
 
LATER LETTERS 181 
 
 the Prussians at this moment. Every one of us, 
 or not a soul ! And it astounds me that three 
 million Frenchmen and thirty thousand cannon 
 were not summoned, over a month ago, under 
 one and the same flag (not that of France alone, 
 but of humanity in general), to repulse this in- 
 vasion of machines rather than of men ! Here 
 comes Mrs. Brown. Good-bye for awhile ! 
 
 V 
 
 8 Morden Road, Blackheath Park, 
 Tuesday, November 8, 1 870. 
 
 Dear Edouard, — We are just going to change 
 houses again. We leave Morden Road next 
 Saturday for London, where my work and en- 
 gagements render my presence indispensable. I 
 must get back to work — and to useful work. I 
 cannot let myself pine and dwindle any longer 
 in endless, hopeless sorrow. In another month 
 I should be utterly incapable. 
 
 If I can write, and sell what I write, I will sell 
 my work. 
 
 If I have to give lessons, I will teach : for the 
 armistice is breaking down, and nobody knows 
 what winter may bring with it. So our poor 
 
182 CHARLES GOUNOD 
 
 little flock is scattered, dear fellow ! Not in heart 
 indeed, but in body ; and " Je ne suis pas de ceux 
 qui disent ce n'est rien ! . . . Je dis que cest 
 beaucoup ! " as old La Fontaine has it. 
 
 Tell my dear little Guillaume how much his 
 letters are treasured, not only by the loving 
 heart of his grandmother, but by his uncle, who 
 watches and follows every symptom of his tastes, 
 every instinct of his nature, everything that bears 
 upon his future, every thought — all those inner 
 workings, in a word, which constitute the con- 
 tinuation of a youth's mental evolution and ulti- 
 mate development — with an affectionate solicitude 
 which I venture to call almost maternal. Every- 
 thing I notice in him is good, and augurs well ; 
 and I believe the serious and even tragic events 
 amid the tumult of which his young life has 
 opened will have endued all his good qualities 
 with a maturity which peace might only have 
 brought them twenty years later. 
 
 Everybody here is well. Jean and Jeanne send 
 their affectionate love to their uncle and cousin. 
 
LATER LETTERS 183 
 
 VI 
 
 My dear Pi, — So our hopes are dashed again, 
 by the final rupture of the armistice, which, 
 as it had seemed to me, was strengthened by all 
 M. Thiers' consummate powers as a negotiator, 
 and for which the Government was willing to 
 make every concession to which a self-respecting 
 nation could condescend. 
 
 And what will happen now ? Alas ! the thought 
 overwhelms me. But though I cannot turn my 
 heart and mind from the misfortunes of our be- 
 loved country, I feel I must make a desperate 
 appeal to my powers of work, to my duty, to my 
 usefulness. Useful I can be to my near and dear 
 ones (for I must support them), and useful, too, to 
 myself — for I must shake free of the slow agony 
 which has been on me ever since we got here, 
 and which would utterly consume me if I did 
 not call together all my remaining strength, to 
 make a struggle against the invasion of my own 
 morale. 
 
 I shall therefore, as events seem likely, for 
 some time to come, to render our return to 
 France impossible, spend the winter in finishing, 
 
184 CHARLES GOUNOD 
 
 or at all events in carrying on my present work, 1 
 so that when the waters go back I may open the 
 window of my ark and let my dove (which may 
 perhaps turn out to be a raven !) fly out. In 
 any case, it will mean that the rainbow has come 
 back, and with it peace among the nations. 
 
 Would you were with us, my dear ones ! How 
 we are scattered this winter ! 
 
 VII 
 
 London, December 24, 1870. 
 Dear Friends, — This is the eve of a great day 
 here, which English people keep as we do New 
 Year's Day. And I must confess that to me 
 Christmas, which brings back the greatest of all 
 dates to our memory, opens the year much more 
 appropriately than our "Jour de l'An." Alas! 
 whichever way we take it, what a year of pain 
 this which is just about to close has been, to 
 each and all of us, parted as we are, after so 
 many misfortunes endured, in anxieties such as 
 still beset us, and amid the dread of what may 
 yet befall us. Our very hearts have groaned 
 and suffered for the last five months, unceasingly. 
 
 1 " Polyeucte.'' Gounod also wrote his " Gallia" at this period. 
 
LATER LETTERS 185 
 
 For five whole months humanity has gazed on 
 a horrid sight — the most merciless work of de- 
 struction, carried on in a century which proudly 
 arrogates to itself the title of " Progress," but 
 the memory of which will go down to posterity 
 stained with the most revolting atrocities. What 
 is progress, forsooth, but the onward march of 
 intelligence, in the light of love ? And what has 
 thiscentury done, I will not say for the pleasure, 
 but for the happiness of the human race ? 
 
 Napoleon I. ! Napoleon III. ! William of Prus- 
 sia ! Waterloo ! mitrailleuses ! Krupp guns ! . . . 
 
 In what a scene of ruin shall we meet ! We 
 have been physically parted, but our hearts have 
 never been severed ! far from it ! It seems as 
 though this hard and cruel apprenticeship must 
 knit us closer to everything that makes life real, 
 and sure, and steadfast. So my heart yearns 
 to yours now, in absence, more tenderly, more 
 clingingly, than it ever did in happier times ! 
 We shall all feel our meeting even more than we 
 should have if we had never been so far apart. 
 Fondest love to each and all of you — to Berthe, 
 to you, dear Pi, to all our friends. 
 
186 CHARLES GOUNOD 
 
 VIII 
 
 December 28, 1870. 
 My dear Edouard, — A sad New Year's Day 
 we shall all have, scattered as we are, and have 
 been for so long ! Homeless, parted from our 
 nearest and dearest, our friends all gone or 
 scattered too, in constant anxiety about the well- 
 being, the health, the very existence of those we 
 love, thousands of lives cut off, and careers de- 
 stroyed, or checked, or hampered — of families 
 brought to ruin, provinces ravaged and harried, 
 and nothing decisive to show at the end of it 
 all. There you have the sum total, the last will 
 and testament of this dying year, which has de- 
 voured countless victims, and spread disaster far 
 and wide — the result at this present moment 
 of " Human Progress." If the tree should be 
 judged by its fruits, and if, as undoubtedly is the 
 case, the value of a cause is to be measured by 
 that of its effect, we must admit, considering 
 what it has brought us to, that human wisdom 
 has gone sadly astray, and that human reason, 
 for the emancipation of which we have been so 
 jealous, does no great credit either to its inde- 
 pendence or its own teachings. If all our mis- 
 
LATER LETTERS 187 
 
 fortunes end by giving us a lesson, by bringing 
 us back to the simplicity of truth, and the truth 
 of simplicity, they will not be utterly wasted, and 
 we shall have gained a somewhat both precious 
 and beneficent. For all things proceed from 
 each other, here below ; truth and falsehood each 
 have their inevitable consequences. According 
 to the tree, so shall its fruit be. What will the 
 year 1871 bring us? I know not; but it seems 
 to me it must be a decisive year, for good or for 
 evil, not for us only, but for Europe — for what is 
 known as the civilised world. We must learn at 
 last where we really are. It is high time that 
 the nations should make sure wherein their life 
 lies, and their death — what their strength is, and 
 their weakness — whence they may look for light, 
 or darkness — how they may escape all temporary 
 shifts, and settle down on firm and durable 
 foundations. This is the method in all sciences ; 
 and politics is a science, which must have a basis 
 and constructive system of its own. 
 
 Well, well ! Best love to Anna and to grand- 
 mamma. 
 
1 88 CHARLES GOUNOD 
 
 IX 
 
 Thursday, March 16, 187 1. 
 
 Dearest Berthe, — Your letter of the 13th 
 only reached us this morning. It has grieved us 
 sorely. Our dreary winter will close sadly in- 
 deed, what with our dear mother's departure, the 
 reasons which make that step wise and even 
 necessary, the thought of how all she will see 
 must wring her heart, and our own disappoint- 
 ment at not having you here for a while, as we 
 had hoped. 
 
 If I was not bound until the 1st of May by 
 the engagements I have made in London for 
 that date, I should have started, and so would 
 Anna and her children, with my mother. Duty, 
 in the shape of earning a few crusts, forbids my 
 moving yet, but we shall be on our way to join 
 you before the first week in May is over. In 
 spite of the very favourable welcome, and the 
 artistic position my work has earned me here, I 
 feel this country is not my France, and I believe, 
 being a particularly human person, that my 
 French nature and habits are too old to be modi- 
 fied by transplanting ; I shall live and die essen- 
 
LATER LETTERS 18 ) 
 
 tially a Frenchman. The day is yet far distant 
 when the sense of the whole earth being his 
 fatherland will predominate in the heart of man 
 over love for the soil of his country. 
 My tenderest greeting to you both. 
 
 X 
 
 London, April 14, 1871. 
 Dear Friend, — Your letter of the 12th has 
 just reached me, and I reply at once, in the hope 
 that my answer may be at Versailles in time to 
 welcome you on your return to the dear fraternal 
 roof, and that thus your two brothers may each 
 greet you after his fashion — one in his peaceful 
 garden, the other by these few lines from the 
 other side of the sea ; one opening his door to 
 you, the other stretching out his arms ; both 
 taking you to their hearts. How large the place 
 you hold there, you know right well ! Alas ! 
 dear friend, dear brother, I too hear the terrible 
 guns whose booming grieves your soul and breaks 
 your heart, as well it may ! As step by step I 
 follow the progress of events, and the various 
 phases of this conflict, or rather of the utter bed- 
 lam which causes and maintains it, I watch the 
 
igo CHARLES GOUNOD 
 
 gradual disappearance — I will not say of my illu- 
 sions (the word is not worthy to express my 
 meaning, nor should I mourn over it as I do), but 
 of my hopes, present or near, at all events, of the 
 approaching erection of a new story in the build- 
 ing of the moral habitation men call " Liberty," 
 the only dwelling, after all, worthy of the human 
 race. No, again I say it, these are no illusions 
 which are fading from our sight ! Liberty is no 
 dream ; it is our Canaan, a true land of promise. 
 But, like the Jews, we shall only see it afar off. 
 To enter it, we must become God's own people. 
 Liberty is as real as heaven. It is a heaven on 
 earth — the country of the elect ; but it must be 
 earned, and conquered, not by oppression, but by 
 self-devotion ; not by pillage, but by generosity ; 
 not by taking life, but by bestowing it, in the 
 moral as well as the material sense. Morally, 
 above all ; for once that is well understood and 
 ascertained, the material side of the question will 
 take care of itself. The man's hygiene must come 
 first, his animal welfare second — that is the just, 
 and therefore the logical course. 
 
 When I consider the outcome (so far at least) 
 of all the moral gifts, all the advances on trust, as 
 
LATER LETTERS 191 
 
 it were, of which humanity, political and social, 
 has been the recipient, up till this present day, I 
 cannot help observing that it has been treated 
 like a spoilt child. I feel inclined to doubt 
 whether a wise and opportune distribution of 
 all those gifts which cannot be appreciated and 
 utilised till the human race comes of age, has 
 not been anticipated with reckless and imprudent 
 prodigality. We still stand in need of overseers. 
 Well, master for master, take it all in all, I would 
 rather have one than two hundred thousand. You 
 can always get rid of one tyrant (natural death, 
 what we call la belle mort, will do that for you) ; 
 but a collective tyranny, compact, endlessly repro- 
 ductive, feeding and fattening perpetually on its 
 own victims ! — I can never believe that is God's 
 chosen model of human evolution. Now, if we 
 carry the argument to its conclusion, we come to 
 this : " Liberty is merely the voluntary and con- 
 scious accomplishment of justice." And as justice 
 is obedience to eternal and unchanging laws, it 
 follows that where there is freedom there must 
 be submission. This is the end of the argument, 
 and the basis of all life. I should go on twad- 
 dling for ever (and so would you), but I must not 
 
192 CHARLES GOUNOD 
 
 forget mine is not the only letter this envelope is 
 to hold. 
 
 So I will send my affectionate love to you and 
 Berthe. — Your brother, 
 
 Ch. Gounod. 
 
BERLIOZ 
 
BERLIOZ 
 
 In the ranks of human nature certain peculiarly 
 sensitive beings are to be found, whom circum- 
 stances affect after a fashion utterly distinct, both 
 in nature and degree, from the results they pro- 
 duce on other men. These individuals form the 
 inevitable exception to an otherwise invariable 
 rule. Their natural idiosyncrasies explain the 
 peculiar features of their various lives, and to 
 these lives again their ultimate fate may fairly 
 be ascribed. 
 
 Now the exceptional men and women lead the 
 world. This is inevitable, for their struggle and 
 their suffering is the price of the enlightenment 
 and progress of humanity at large. Once these 
 intellectual pioneers have dropped on the road 
 they have hewed out — oh ! then troops up the 
 flock of imitators, full of the pride of breaking 
 down the already opened door ; every separate 
 sheep of them, as vainglorious as the legendary 
 fly on the coach-wheel, loudly claiming the honour 
 
196 CHARLES GOUNOD 
 
 and glory of having won triumph for the Revo- 
 lution. "J'ai tant fait que nos gens sont enfin 
 dans la plaine ! " Like Beethoven, Berlioz was 
 one of the illustrious sufferers from that painful 
 privilege of being an exceptional man. Dearly 
 did he pay for the heavy responsibility ! The 
 exceptional man must suffer. Fate wills it thus, 
 and, as invariably, he must bring suffering on 
 others. How can the common herd (that pro- 
 fanum vulgus so execrated by the poet Horace) 
 be expected to acknowledge its own incompetence 
 and bow down before any insignificant though 
 audacious person who dares stand out boldly 
 against inveterate custom and the sovereign rule 
 of old-established routine ? Did not Voltaire (a 
 clever man, if ever there was one) declare that 
 no one person was as clever as all the rest put 
 together? And is not universal suffrage, the 
 great achievement of these modern days, the irre- 
 vocable verdict of the sovereign populace ? Does 
 not the voice of the people equal the voice divine ? 
 History, meanwhile, with its steady onward 
 march, which from time to time exposes many 
 a counterfeit — history, I say, teaches us that 
 everywhere, and invariably, light proceeds from 
 the individual to the multitude, and never from 
 
BERLIOZ 197 
 
 the multitude to the individual; from the wise 
 to the ignorant, never from the ignorant to the 
 wise ; from the sun to the planet, never from the 
 planet to the sun. You cannot expect thirty-six 
 millions of blind men to do the work of one 
 telescope, or thirty-six millions of sheep that of 
 one shepherd ! Was it the world at large that 
 formed Raphael and Michael Angelo, Mozart and 
 Beethoven, Newton and Galileo ? The world ! — 
 which spends its life making and unmaking its own 
 judgments, in a perpetual alternate condemnation 
 of its own infatuations and prejudices. How can 
 the world judge anything ? Would you erect such 
 wavering contradictory decrees into an infallible 
 jurisdiction ? The very thought is laughable. 
 The world's first impulse is to scourge and crucify. 
 Long afterwards, in the next generation oftener 
 than not, or a still later one, a tardy repentance 
 reverses the judgment, and the laurels denied to 
 the living genius fall like rain upon his tomb. 
 The only true and definite sentence, that of pos- 
 terity, is but the accumulated judgment of succes- 
 sive minorities. Majorities are the "preservers 
 of the statu quo." I do not blame them. They 
 probably fulfil their true function in the general 
 order of things. They may keep the chariot 
 
198 CHARLES GOUNOD 
 
 back. They certainly do not help it onwards. 
 They act as a drag, when they do not play 
 the part of ruts upon the path. Immediate suc- 
 cess is often enough a mere question of fashion. 
 It proves a work to be on a level with the age ; 
 it by no means argues any long survival. There 
 is no great reason, then, for being proud of it. 
 
 Berlioz was a very single-minded man, ignorant 
 of all arts of concession or compromise. Belong- 
 ing, as he did, to the race of Alcestis, naturally 
 enough the hand of every Orontes was against 
 him. And how many "Orontes" there are in 
 this world ! People called him crotchety, surly, 
 quarrelsome, what not ! But surely those who 
 complained of this extreme sensitiveness, often 
 amounting to excessive irritability, should have 
 made some allowance for the annoyances, the 
 personal suffering, the innumerable rebuffs en- 
 dured by a proud-hearted man, to whom any 
 mean compliance or cringing servility was utterly 
 impossible. Though his opinions may have 
 seemed hard and severe to those concerning 
 whom they were expressed, they never, at all 
 events, can be attributed to any shameful or 
 jealous motive. Such feelings were quite in- 
 compatible with the nobility of that great and 
 
BERLIOZ 199 
 
 generous and loyal nature. The trials endured 
 by Berlioz when competing for the Grand Prix 
 de Rome were the faithful image, and, as it 
 were, the prophetic prelude to those he was to 
 face all through his career. He actually com- 
 peted four times over, and he was twenty-seven 
 when, by dint of his own perseverance, and in 
 spite of the innumerable difficulties he had to 
 overcome, he won the prize, in the year 1830. 
 
 The very year which saw him carry off the 
 prize with his cantata " Sardanapale " also saw 
 the execution of a work which demonstrated 
 the point his artistic development (so far as 
 musical conception, colour, and experience are 
 concerned) had reached. His " Symphonie Fan- 
 tastique" ("episode dans la vie d'un artiste") was 
 a real event in the musical world, the importance 
 of which may be gauged by the fanatical ad- 
 miration and the violent opposition it aroused. 
 Admitting that a work of such a nature may be 
 open to much discussion, the fact that its com- 
 poser possessed most remarkable inventive power, 
 and a powerful poetic sentiment (which reappears 
 in all his subsequent compositions), still remains 
 evident. 
 
 Berlioz has put into musical circulation, so to 
 
zoo CHARLES GOUNOD 
 
 speak, a large number of orchestral effects and 
 combinations which were unknown before his 
 time, and which have been adopted by very 
 illustrious musicians indeed. He has revolu- 
 tionised the art of instrumentation, and in that 
 respect, at all events, may be said to have 
 " founded a school." And yet, in spite of certain 
 brilliant successes both in France and elsewhere, 
 his whole life was a struggle. In spite of per- 
 formances to which his personal guidance as an 
 orchestral conductor of great eminence and his 
 indefatigable energy added many chances of 
 success and many elements of brilliance, his 
 personal public was always a limited one. 
 The great public, that "everybody" which 
 turns success into popularity, never knew him. 
 Popularity was so slow in coming to Berlioz 
 that he died of the delay. The end came at 
 last, with the "Troyens," a work which, as he 
 foresaw, caused him a world of sorrow. Like 
 his namesake and his hero, he may be said to 
 have perished before the walls of Troy. Every 
 impression, every sensation Berlioz underwent 
 was carried to an extreme. He knew no joy 
 or sorrow short of downright delirium. As he 
 himself would say, he was a "volcano." Ex- 
 
BERLIOZ 201 
 
 treme sensibility carries one as far in suffering 
 as in delight. Tabor and Golgotha are not far 
 apart. Happiness no more consists in the ab- 
 sence of suffering than genius implies freedom 
 from all faults. 
 
 Men of genius must and do suffer, but they 
 need no pity. They know raptures which are 
 a sealed book to others, and if they have wept 
 for sadness, they have shed tears of ineffable joy 
 as well. That in itself constitutes a heaven that 
 can never be too dearly bought. 
 
 Berlioz was one of the greatest emotional 
 influences of my youth. Older than myself by 
 fifteen years, he was a man of four-and-thirty 
 when I, a lad of nineteen, studied composition 
 under Halevy at the Conservatoire. I recollect 
 the impression his person and his works (which 
 he often rehearsed in the concert-room of the 
 Conservatoire) produced on me. The moment 
 Halevy had corrected my work I used to fly from 
 the class-room, and lie low in some corner of the 
 concert-hall, and there remain, intoxicated by 
 the weird, passionate, tumultuous strains, which 
 seemed to open new and brilliant worlds to me. 
 One day, I remember, I had been listening to a 
 rehearsal of his "Romeo and Juliet" Symphony, 
 
202 CHARLES GOUNOD 
 
 then unpublished, and which was shortly to be 
 given in public for the first time. I was so 
 struck by the grandeur and breadth of the great 
 finale of the " Reconciliation des Montaigus et 
 des Capulets," that when I left the hall my 
 memory retained the whole of Friar Lawrence's 
 splendid phrase, "Jurez tous par l'auguste sym- 
 bole." A few days afterwards I went to see 
 Berlioz, and sitting down to the piano, I played 
 the whole passage over to him. He opened his 
 eyes very wide, and looking hard at me, he 
 asked — 
 
 " Where the devil did you hear that ? " 
 "At one of your rehearsals," I replied. He 
 could hardly believe his ears. 
 
 The sum total of Berlioz' work is very con- 
 siderable. Thanks to the initiative of two 
 courageous orchestral leaders (M. Jules Pas- 
 deloup and M. Edouard Colonne), the present 
 public has already become acquainted with 
 several of the great composer's vast conceptions — 
 the " Symphonie Fantastique," the " Romeo and 
 Juliet" Symphony, the "Harold Symphony," the 
 " Enfance du Christ," three or four great over- 
 tures, and, above all, that magnificent work the 
 " Damnation de Faust," which in the course of 
 
BERLIOZ 203 
 
 the last two years has roused such transports 
 of enthusiasm as would have stirred the artist's 
 very ashes, if the dead could stir. But what a 
 mine remains yet unexplored ! Shall we never 
 hear his "Te Deum," in all its grandeur of con- 
 ception ? And will no director produce that 
 charming opera, " Beatrix et Benedict ? " Such 
 an attempt nowadays, when opinion has so 
 veered round to Berlioz' side, would have every 
 chance of success. Though no particular merit 
 on the score of risk encountered could be claimed, 
 it might be wise to seize the favourable oppor- 
 tunity. The following letters have a double 
 charm. They are all unpublished hitherto, and 
 every one of them has been written in the spirit 
 of absolute sincerity, which is the eternally in- 
 dispensable condition of true friendship. Some 
 may deplore the lack of deference they betray 
 with respect to men whose talents should appa- 
 rently shield them from irreverent and unjust 
 description. People will say, and not unreason- 
 ably, that Berlioz would have done better not 
 to style Bellini a "little blackguard," and that 
 the appellation of "illustrious old gentleman" as 
 applied to Cherubini, with evidently ill-natured 
 intent, was very inappropriate to the eminent com- 
 
204 CHARLES GOUNOD 
 
 poser whom Beethoven considered the greatest 
 of his age, and to whom he, Beethoven, the 
 mighty symphonist, paid the signal honour of 
 humbly submitting the MS. of the "Messe 
 Solennelle" (Op. 123), with the request that he 
 would freely express his opinion concerning it. 
 Be that as it may, and in spite of blots for 
 which the writer's cross-grained temper is alone 
 responsible, the letters are most deeply interest- 
 ing. Berlioz bares his heart in them, as it were. 
 He lets himself go ; he enters into the most 
 intimate details of his private and artistic life. 
 In a word, he opens his whole heart to his friend, 
 and that in terms of such effusive warmth and 
 affection as prove how worthy each was of the 
 other's friendship, and how complete the mutual 
 understanding was. To understand each other ! 
 How the word calls up that immortal fable 
 of our heaven-sent La Fontaine, " Les deux 
 Amis." 
 
 To understand ! to enter into that perfect com- 
 munion of heart and thought and interest to 
 which we give the two fairest names in human 
 language — friendship and love. Therein lies 
 life's whole charm, and the most powerful attrac- 
 tion, too, in that written life, that conversation 
 
BERLIOZ 205 
 
 betwixt parted friends which is so appropriately 
 known as "correspondence." 
 
 The musical works of Berlioz may earn him 
 glory. The published letters will do more. They 
 will earn him love, and that is the most precious 
 of all earthly things. 
 
 Charles Gounod. 
 
M. CAMILLE SAINT-SAENS AND HIS 
 OPERA "HENRI VIII." 
 
M. CAMILLE SAINT-SAENS AND HIS 
 OPERA "HENRI VIII." 
 
 When, after years of perseverance and struggle, 
 a highly gifted artist gains the exalted place in 
 public opinion to which he is justly entitled, 
 everybody, even his most obstinate opponent, 
 exclaims, " Didn't I always say people would 
 end by coming round?" 
 
 Five and twenty years ago, or more (for he 
 came out as an infant prodigy), M. Saint-Saens 
 made his first appearance in the musical world. 
 How many times since then have I been told : 
 "Saint-Saens? Eh? Now really? Oh, as a 
 pianist or an organist, I dare say. But as a com- 
 poser! Do you really and truly think? . . ." 
 And all the rest of the usual stereotyped phrases. 
 Well, I did think so, really and truly ; and I was 
 not the only person who did. Now everybody 
 else thinks so too. Misgivings have all faded 
 away, prejudices are all dispelled — M. Saint- 
 Saens has won. He has only to say, " J'y suis, 
 
2io CHARLES GOUNOD 
 
 j'y reste," and he will be one of the glories of 
 his time and of his art. 
 
 According to admitted opinion among certain 
 artists, if a man speaks well of a brother artist's 
 work, the natural inference is that he thinks ill 
 of it, and vice versd. But why ? Must you re- 
 fuse to admit other men's talent or genius in 
 order to prove your own ? Did Beethoven slay 
 Mozart? Will Rossini prevent Mendelssohn 
 from living on ? Do you believe that, as Celi- 
 mene says in the play, "C'est etre savant que 
 trouver a redire " ? 
 
 Are you afraid there will not be room enough 
 for you ? Pray calm that fear ! There will 
 always be room and to spare in the Temple of 
 Fame. If your place is marked there, it awaits 
 you. The great point is that you should come 
 and take it. 
 
 No ; the real dread is that of not being fore- 
 most. Alack ! this fretful, nervous preoccupation 
 concerning relative value is the very antithesis 
 of real merit. It is the same shabby old story — 
 love of self usurping the place and duty of love 
 in the true sense. Let us love our art. Let us 
 fight, in all honesty and boldness, for any man 
 or woman who serves it bravely and nobly. Let 
 
SAINT-SAENS AND HIS OPERA 211 
 
 us not hold truth "captive in the hand of in- 
 justice." That which we strive to conceal to- 
 day will surely be in public knowledge on the 
 morrow. The only honourable course is to pre- 
 pare that judgment of posterity, the vox populi, 
 vox Dei, which ranks no man by favour, or, what 
 is worse, by interest, but gives sentence in true 
 justice, infallible and eternal. 
 
 To keep back the truth, proves that we do 
 not love it. To grieve because some other man 
 serves truth better than ourselves, proves that 
 we would have the honour due to truth alone 
 paid to our own persons. 
 
 Let us rather do all we can to diffuse the 
 light of truth. We never can have too much 
 of it. 
 
 M. Saint-Saens is one of the most astonishingly 
 gifted men, as regards musical powers, I have 
 ever met with. He is armed at all points. He 
 knows his business thoroughly. I need only 
 remark that he uses his orchestra, and plays 
 with it, just as he plays on and with his piano. 
 
 He possesses the gift of description in the 
 highest and rarest degree. He has an enormous 
 power of assimilation. He can write you a work 
 in any style you choose — Rossini's, Verdi's, Schu- 
 
2i2 CHARLES GOUNOD 
 
 mann's, Wagner's. He knows them all thoroughly 
 — the surest safeguard, it may be, against his 
 imitating any. He never suffers from that bug- 
 bear of the chicken-hearted, the dread of not 
 making his effect. He never exaggerates ; thus 
 he is never far-fetched, nor violent, nor over- 
 emphatic. He uses every combination and every 
 resource without abuse, and without being en- 
 slaved by any one of them. 
 
 He is no pedant. There is no solemnity, no 
 transcendentalism about him. He is too childish 
 still, and has grown far too wise, for that. He 
 has no special system ; he belongs to no party 
 or clique. He does not set up to be a reformer 
 of any sort. He writes as he feels and knows. 
 Mozart was no reformer either, and, as far as I 
 am aware, that fact has not prevented his reach- 
 ing the highest pinnacle of his art. 
 
 Another virtue (and one I desire to emphasise 
 in these days), M. Saint- Saens writes music that 
 keeps time, without perpetually dragging out over 
 those silly and detestable pauses which make any 
 proper musical construction impossible, and which 
 are a mere maudlin affectation. He is simply a 
 thoroughbred musician, who draws and paints 
 with all the freedom of a master-hand ; and if 
 
SAINT-SAENS AND HIS OPERA 213 
 
 originality consists in never imitating another, 
 there can be no doubt about it in his case. 
 
 I do not propose in this place to go into all 
 the details of the libretto of " Henri VIII." The 
 various newspaper reports of the first performance 
 have already performed that duty ; and besides, 
 the story (I had almost said of that crowned hog !) 
 of that practised Bluebeard and conceited and 
 contemptible theologian is known to everybody. 
 Nothing less than the triple crown sufficed his 
 ambition, and the thought of the Pope disturbed 
 his mind as much, at all events, as any woman, 
 or strong drink, even. 
 
 But storm and threats availed him nothing. 
 The Papacy has been blustered at in every key, 
 but it still slumbers on peacefully in its bark, 
 which no tempest seems able to submerge. 
 
 M. Saint -Saens has given us no overture to 
 this opera. This is certainly not because he 
 lacked symphonic skill. Of that he has already 
 given us superabundant proof. The work opens 
 with a prelude based on an English theme, which 
 will reappear as the principal one in the finale of 
 the third act. 
 
 This prelude introduces us to the actual drama. 
 In the very first scene, between Norfolk and Don 
 
214 CHARLES GOUNOD 
 
 Gomez, the Spanish Ambassador to Henry VIII.'s 
 Court, a charming air occurs, " La beaut £ que je 
 sers." It has a ring of youth about it, and the 
 close, on the words, " Bien que je ne la nomme 
 pas," is quite exquisitely simple. 
 
 In the first act the most remarkable numbers 
 are a chorus of gentlemen discussing Bucking- 
 ham's sentence; the King's air, "Qui done com- 
 mande quand il aime?" wonderfully truthful in 
 expression; Anne Boleyn's entrde — a graceful 
 ritournelle, leading up to a charming chorus for 
 female voices, " Salut a toi qui nous viens de la 
 France," which is followed by a passage quite out 
 of the common both as regards the music itself 
 and the scenic effect. I refer to the funeral 
 march, when Buckingham is borne to his last 
 home, in which the De Profundis is interwoven 
 in a superlatively talented manner with the asides 
 of the King and of Anne Boleyn in front ; while 
 the orchestra, as well as the monarch, whispers 
 the caressing phrase which is to reappear in the 
 course of the opera, " Si tu savais comme je 
 t'aime ! " in the young maid- of- honour's ear. 
 This fine scene closes with a masterly ensemble, 
 treated with great dramatic breadth, and which 
 fitly and nobly crowns the first act. 
 
SAINT-SAENS AND HIS OPERA 215 
 
 The second act is laid in Richmond Park. 
 It opens with a charming prelude — exquisitely 
 dainty and clear in instrumentation — introducing 
 a delightful theme which reappears later on in the 
 duet between the King and Anne Boleyn, one of 
 the most remarkable passages in the whole score. 
 After a soliloquy for Don Gomez, offering 
 some fine opportunities for declamation, Anne 
 Boleyn appears, with the ladies of the Court, 
 who offer her flowers. This scene is full of 
 charm and refinement. Then comes a short 
 scene for Anne and Don Gomez, and then her 
 jgreat duet with the King. This duet is a very 
 remarkable piece of writing. It throbs with im- 
 patient sensuality, concealed by an instrumen- 
 tation full of the suggestion of feline caresses. 
 The last ensemble is exquisite — well-nigh un- 
 approachable in sonority and charm. The next 
 air, "Reine! je serai reine!" gives a fine im- 
 pression of a woman's intoxicated pride.' In 
 the duet between Anne Boleyn and Katherine 
 of Aragon the expression given to the feelings of 
 that noble-minded, unhappy Queen, alternately 
 proud and tenderly forgiving, is very striking. 
 
 The third act represents the Council Chamber. 
 It opens with a stately march, accompanying the 
 
zi6 CHARLES GOUNOD 
 
 entrance of the Court and the Judges. Then 
 commences a superb full chorus, "Toi qui veilles 
 sur l'Angleterre," after which Henry VIII. ad- 
 dresses the Synod, "Vous tous qui m'ecoutez, 
 gens d'Eglise et de loi ! " Katherine, sorely 
 agitated, scarcely able to speak, advances, and 
 beseeches the King to have pity on her. This 
 passage, in which the chorus occasionally joins, 
 is most true and touching in feeling. In the face 
 of the King's cruel scorn of his unhappy Queen, 
 Don Gomez rises, and declares that as a Spaniard 
 he undertakes the defence of his mistress. In 
 his rage, Henry VIII. appeals to his subjects, 
 " les fils de la noble Angleterre," who proclaim 
 themselves ready to accept the decree of Heaven, 
 about to be delivered by the Archbishop of Can- 
 terbury : " Nous declarons nul et contraire aux 
 lois, l'hymen a nous soumis." 
 
 Katherine rebels, and in a transport of indig- 
 nant pride she cries, " Peuple que de ton roi 
 deshonore le crime — tu ne te leves pas ! " 
 
 This passage is very striking and impressive. 
 Katherine appeals to posterity, and goes out with 
 Don Gomez. 
 
 The Legate enters, and then comes the great 
 scene with which the third act closes. 
 
SAINT-SAENS AND HIS OPERA 217 
 
 In his hand the Legate holds the Papal Bull — 
 " Au nom de Clement VII. pontife souverain." 
 
 The King, driven to extremities, commands 
 that the Palace gates shall be thrown open, and 
 the populace admitted. 
 
 " Vous plait-il recevoir des lois de l'dtranger ? 
 
 Non ! Jamais ! 
 Vous convient-il qu'un homme 
 Dont le vrai pouvoir est a Rome 
 Sur mon trone ose m'outrager? 
 
 Non ! Jamais ! " 
 
 And the King proclaims himself Head of the 
 English Church, and takes Anne Boleyn, Mar- 
 chioness of Pembroke, to wife ! 
 
 This splendidly managed scene winds up with 
 a stirring chorus, " C'en est done fait ! il a brise 
 sa chaine," worked out on the theme of the 
 national air already appearing in the prelude 
 which takes the place of overture to the opera. 
 
 The fourth act is also divided into two parts. 
 The first is laid in Anne Boleyn's chamber. The 
 curtain rises on a graceful song and dance, during 
 which Norfolk and Surrey carry on an aside con- 
 versation very ingeniously interwoven with the 
 dance-music. The next scene, between Anne and 
 Don Gomez, has a charming air, sung with much 
 
218 CHARLES GOUNOD 
 
 expression by M. Dereims. A dialogue between 
 the King and Don Gomez closes this first part. 
 
 The second shows us a huge apartment in the 
 banished Queen Katherine's lodging at Kim- 
 bolton Castle. The touch of a master-hand is 
 evident all through these closing scenes of M. 
 Saint- Saens' opera. They are instinct with in- 
 comparable power. 
 
 There is an admirable truth and sincerity in 
 the Queen's soliloquy, full of tender and mourn- 
 ful expression. She presently distributes some 
 of her belongings as keepsakes to her waiting- 
 women. This little scene, almost domestic in its 
 familiarity, is ennobled by the deep feeling with 
 which the author has inspired it. Thus does 
 truth elevate everything it touches ! 
 
 Next comes the magnificent scene between 
 Queen Katherine and Anne Boleyn. Mdlle. 
 Krauss's comprehension and rendering of the 
 Queen's superb note of indignation marked the 
 consummate tragedian ; her acting of the part 
 rose to a striking level both of expression and of 
 power. 
 
 The final numbers of this second and closing 
 part form what is known in theatrical parlance 
 as the clou of the drama. It is overwhelming. 
 
SAINT-SAENS AND HIS OPERA a 19 
 
 Never did curtain fall on anything more thrilling. 
 Situation, music, singing, acting, all contribute to 
 the powerful impression caused by this splendid 
 scene — which called forth thunders of applause. 
 
 Such, as far as so hasty a description can give any 
 idea of it, is M. Camille Saint-Saens' new work. 
 
 As for the performers — every one of them fully 
 equal to their task — we must first mention those 
 who played the three principal parts : Mdlle. 
 Krauss (Katherine of Aragon), Mdlle. Richard 
 (Anne Boleyn), and M. Lassalle (Henry VIII.). 
 Next come M. Boudouresque (the Papal Legate), 
 M. Dereims (Don Gomez), M. Lorrain (Norfolk), 
 M. Sapin (Surrey), and M. Gaspard (Archbishop 
 of Canterbury). 
 
 Mdlle. Krauss was full of grandeur, nobility, 
 and royal dignity. Both as actress and as singer, 
 she proved her wonderful power of pathos. In the 
 final scene especially, she sang, acted, suffered, 
 with a truthfulness and intensity of expression 
 which literally overwhelmed the onlookers with 
 the sense of its reality. What a splendid artiste ! 
 What numberless parts she has identified with 
 herself ! How gallantly she plays them all ! 
 What a place she holds on our stage! What 
 a void her absence would leave ! 
 
220 CHARLES GOUNOD 
 
 The part of Anne Boleyn gave Mdlle. Richard 
 the opportunity of displaying all the charm of 
 her full and beautiful voice, the rich tone of 
 which is never strained by the wisely and well 
 written music of her part. 
 
 M. Lassalle gave that of Henry VIII. all the 
 interest of his clear diction and articulation ; of a 
 play that was sometimes gloomy and forbidding 
 and sometimes impassioned ; and of that rare 
 voice of his, equally gifted in every shade of 
 strength and softness. 
 
 M. Boudouresque would seem to have been 
 born to be a Cardinal {pace the diabolic Bertram 
 and the Huguenot Marcel, whom he represents 
 so skilfully) ! He looks as if he had been sent 
 into the world to play Princes of the Church — 
 vide Brogni in " La Juive," and this Papal Legate 
 in "Henri VIII.," whom he invests with most 
 imposing dignity. 
 
 M. Dereims, as Don Gomez, was remarkable 
 for elegance and charm. 
 
 The orchestra, under M. Altes, was admirable ; 
 as was also the chorus, carefully taught and led 
 by M. Jules Cohen. 
 
 M. Vaucorbeil, too, deserves a place of honour. 
 He believed in M. Saint- Saens, and as soon as 
 
SAINT-SAENS AND HIS OPERA 221 
 
 he became Director of the Opera, he expressed 
 a desire to see his work on our chief lyric 
 stage. As is his custom, the truly artistic Director 
 devoted all his intelligent care and attention to 
 producing this noble and serious work ; while 
 yet another true artist, M. Regnier, gave it the 
 benefit of all the scenic experience his long and 
 brilliant theatrical career has brought him. 
 
 So, dear Saint- Saens, you now behold your 
 name linked with a work which has earned most 
 signal honour for French art and for our National 
 Academy of Music. To those who knew you as 
 a child (myself among the number) your destiny 
 was never doubtful. Musically speaking, you 
 never had any childhood. Watchfully cherished 
 as you were by your wise and noble-hearted 
 mother, your earliest years were nourished by 
 the great masters of your art. They set your 
 feet boldly and firmly on your onward path. 
 Your reputation has long since outstripped that 
 order of popularity which is apparently the special 
 privilege of the dramatic stage. The only thing 
 lacking to give it weight was a brilliant theatrical 
 success. That is now yours. 
 
 Forward then, dear and great musician ! You 
 have won all along the line. Posterity will be 
 
222 CHARLES GOUNOD 
 
 faithful to your work, because you are true to 
 your art ! God has gifted you with the master's 
 knowledge and the master - hand ! May they 
 long be preserved to you, for your sake and 
 for ours ! 
 
NATURE AND ART 
 
NATURE AND ART 
 
 Paper read by M. Charles Gounod, Member of the Acaddmie 
 des Beaux Arts, at the Annual Public Meeting of the Five 
 Academies, October 23, 1886. 
 
 Gentlemen, — The successive transformations of 
 which this earth has been the scene, and which 
 form its history — I had almost said its education 
 — since it dropped from its place amongst the 
 solar nebulae to take up a more distinct position 
 in space, are so many chapters, as it were, in that 
 great law of progress, that perpetual tending, which 
 seems to draw all creation towards some mysteri- 
 ous goal, and whose various phases have been 
 summed up in three general orders which have 
 been designated ages, and which denote the three 
 hitherto most evident phases of existence on our 
 globe. But the book was not closed here, and 
 earth's history was not to end with these three 
 earliest forms of life. A fourth, the Human 
 Age (for thus science permits me to call it), was 
 to reign in this unconscious kingdom. The 
 
 p 
 
226 CHARLES GOUNOD 
 
 huge travail of evolution, the tremendous effort 
 of parturition in which the plan of the Creator is 
 unfolded, was to be taken up by man atthe point 
 to which his forerunners had carried it, and Tsqjae 
 brought, by the exercise of nobler functions, to a 
 yet higher destiny. The law of life, of which 
 earth's creatures had so far been the more or less 
 passive but utterly irresponsible depositaries, was 
 to be confided to man's care, he being raised to the 
 supreme honour of voluntarily accomplishing its 
 known behest — an honour constituting the essen- 
 tial idea of liberty, and which instantly trans- 
 forms instinctive activity into rational or conscious 
 action. In a word, Morality (or the definition of 
 what is good), Science (or the definition of what is 
 true), Art (or the definition of what is beautiful), 
 wer^ all lacking until the advent of Man. And 
 Man, in his quality of high priest of a temple, 
 thenceforward dedicated to Goodness, Beauty, 
 and Truth, was destined to dower and glorify the 
 world by their bestowal. 
 
 What, then, is an artist ? What is his function 
 with regard to this conception of Nature, and, 
 as I may almost say, this investment of her 
 capital ? 
 
 Man's sublime function is literally and positively 
 
NATURE AND ART 227 
 
 that of a new earthly Creator. His duty is to 
 make all things what they ought to become. Not 
 merely in the matter of the cultivation of the soil 
 of our earth, but also as regards intellectual and 
 moral culture — justice, love, science, arts, trade 
 and manufactures — no consummation nor true 
 conclusion is possible save through Man, to whom 
 creation was confided that he might till it — " ut 
 operatur terram," as the old text of the Book of 
 Genesis runs. An artist, then, is not simply a sort 
 of mechanical apparatus which receives or reflects 
 the image of exterior and visible objects ; he is a 
 sensitive and living instrument, which wakes to 
 consciousness and vibrates at the touch of Nature. 
 And this vibration it is which at once indicates 
 the artistic vocation, and is the primary cause of 
 any work of art. 
 
 Necessarily called into existence, in the first 
 place, by the fostering rays of a personal senti- 
 ment, a true work of art must reach its perfect 
 form in the full and impersonal light of reason. 
 Art is concrete and visible reality, glorified by 
 that other abstract and intelligible reality which 
 the artist bears within himself, and which is his 
 ideal ; that is to say, the inner revelation, the 
 supreme tribunal, the ever-growing vision of ulti- 
 
228 CHARLES GOUNOD 
 
 mate possibility after which the whole fervour of 
 his being strives. 
 
 If it were possible for the artist to lay hands 
 on his ideal — to gaze on it face to face, in all 
 its complete reality — its reproduction would be 
 reduced to a mere matter of copying. This would 
 amount to downright realism, superlative of its 
 kind no doubt, but positive ; and thus the two 
 factors of the artist's work — the personal function, 
 which constitutes its originality, and the aesthetic 
 one, which constitutes its rationality — are at once 
 eliminated. This is not the true relation between 
 the work of art and the artist's ideal conception. 
 The ideal can never be adequately reproduced. 
 It is the loadstar, the motive force. The artist 
 feels it, he is ruled by it, it is his undefined " ex- 
 celsior," the imperious desideratum imposed on 
 him by the law of Beauty, and the very persist- 
 ence of its inner prompting proves its truth and 
 the impossibility of its attainment. 
 
 To draw from an imperfect and lower reality 
 the elements which shall measure and determine 
 the extent to which the said reality agrees or dis- 
 agrees with Nature's reasonable law, herein lies 
 the artist's highest function. And this verification 
 of Nature as it is, by Nature's own laws, is what 
 
NATURE AND ART 229 
 
 is known as " ^Esthetics." "^Esthetics" are the 
 argument of Beauty. 
 
 In art, as elsewhere, reason must counter- 
 balance passion, and thence it follows that all 
 artistic work of the very highest class leaves an 
 impress of calm — that sign of real power, which 
 "rules its art even to the checking point." 
 
 As we have already observed, it is the. personal 
 emotion, in the artist's collaboration with Nature, 
 which gives the stamp of originality to his work. 
 Originality is often confounded with peculiarity 
 or oddity. Yet they are absolutely distinct 
 qualities. Oddity is something abnormal, even 
 unhealthy. It is a mitigated form of mental 
 alienation, and belongs to the region of pathology. 
 As the synonymous word eccentricity so well de- 
 notes, it is a deviation, a running off at a tangent. 
 
 Originality, on the other hand, is the distinctly 
 evident link which binds the individual to the 
 common intellectual centre. The work of art is 
 the progeny of the common mother — Nature ; 
 and of a distinct father — the artist. Its origin- 
 ality is simply an asseveration of paternity. It 
 is the proper name linked to the family appella- 
 tion, an individual recommendation approved by 
 the community at large. 
 
230 CHARLES GOUNOD 
 
 But the artist's work does not consist merely 
 in his personal expression, though that indeed 
 gives it its distinctive quality, its individual 
 features, even while it thereby confines them 
 within certain limits. 
 
 As a matter of fact, while his artistic sensitive- 
 ness brings him into touch with actual nature, 
 his reason brings him into equal contact with 
 ideal nature, and this in virtue of that law of 
 transfiguration which must be applied to all 
 existent realities, so as to draw them ever closer 
 to those which are — in other words, to their per- 
 fect prototype. 
 
 Let me here quote a sentence which seems to 
 me, at all events, a somewhat striking formulation, 
 even if it be not a proof, of the truth of the fore- 
 going remarks. St. Theresa, that pious woman 
 whose brilliant wisdom has earned her a place 
 amongst the most famous teachers of the Church, 
 used to say she did not remember ever to have 
 heard a bad sermon. I ask no better than to 
 believe this, seeing she said it. But it must be 
 admitted that unless the saint deceived herself, 
 she herself at least, if not the period in which 
 she lived, must have been blessed with some 
 special favour, by no means the lightest, in all 
 
NATURE AND ART 231 
 
 conscience, which God has been pleased to 
 bestow upon His faithful servants. However 
 that may have been, and without desiring to 
 cast the slightest doubt on the faithfulness of 
 her witness, it may be explained — translated, let 
 us say ; and we may arrive at some comprehen- 
 sion of how, and to what an occasionally astound- 
 ing extent, the inaccurate relation of a fact may 
 co-exist with the absolute veracity of the person 
 who bears the testimony. 
 
 Why did St. Theresa never recollect having 
 heard a bad sermon ? Because every sermon 
 she heard with her outward ears was spontane- 
 ously transfigured, and literally recreated by 
 reason of the sublimity of that which sounded 
 ever within her own soul. Because the words 
 of the preacher, void though they might be of 
 literary power or oratorical artifice, spoke to her 
 of that which she loved best in the world, and 
 once her spirit was borne in that direction, or to 
 that level, she felt and heard nothing but God — 
 concerning whom the preacher spoke. 
 
 " Use my eyes," said a famous painter, when 
 an acquaintance complained of the hideousness 
 of his model ; " use my eyes, sir, and you will 
 see he is sublime ! " 
 
232 CHARLES GOUNOD 
 
 Thus, at the mere sight of even a second-rate 
 work, so that it suffice to kindle that divine 
 spark, the hall-mark of genius, in his soul, the 
 truly great artist will suddenly grasp his idea, 
 and fathom the very depths of his art in one 
 swift piercing glance. 
 
 Who can tell whether the " Barbier de Seville " 
 and " Guillaume Tell " were not cradled on the 
 paternal trestle stage on which Rossini's musical 
 training first began ? 
 
 To pass from exterior tangible realities to 
 emotion, from emotion onwards to reason, this 
 is the progressive order of true intellectual de- 
 velopment. And this it is which St. Augustine 
 sums up so admirably in one of those clear and 
 perspicuous maxims constantly to be met with in 
 his works : " Ab exterioribus ad interiora, ab in- 
 terioribus ad superiora " — From without, within ; 
 from within, above. 
 
 Art is one of the three incarnations of the 
 ideal in the real ; one of the three operations of 
 that spirit which is to "renew the face of the 
 earth ; " one of the three revivals of Nature in 
 man ; one of the three forms, in a word, of that 
 principle of separate immortality which constitutes 
 the perpetual resurrection of humanity at large, 
 
NATURE AND ART 233 
 
 by virtue of its three creative powers, distinct 
 in function, though substantially identical— viz., 
 Love, the essence of human life ; Science, the 
 essence of truth ; and Art, the essence of 
 beauty. 
 
 Having thus endeavoured to show how the 
 law which governs the progress of the human 
 mind resides in the union of the ideal with the 
 real, it now remains for me to give the counter- 
 proof, by demonstrating the result of the separa- 
 tion and isolation of these two factors. 
 
 In art, mere realism is another word for slavish 
 imitation. Utter idealism is the madness of fancy. 
 In science, reality, by itself, is the enigma of fact 
 unenlightened by its laws. Idealism alone is a 
 ghostly conjecture, devoid of the confirmation of 
 actualities. 
 
 In morality, realism unadulterated means the 
 egotism of self-interest — in other words, a lack of 
 rational sanction in the field of human will. Un- 
 mixed idealism is mere Utopia, or the absence of 
 the sanction of experience in all that is governed 
 by human maxims. 
 
 In each and every case there must be either a 
 soulless body or a disembodied soul ; a denial of 
 the law of existence by one who belongs at once, 
 
234 CHARLES GOUNOD 
 
 by virtue of his double nature, to the tangible and 
 to the intellectual order of life, and whose being is 
 only normal and complete inasmuch as it gives 
 expression to these two orders of reality. If there 
 be one peculiarity specially characteristic of these 
 three high human vocations, the service of Good- 
 ness, of Beauty, and of Truth — if there be a bond 
 between them, which marks the divinity of their 
 common origin, and raises them to truly Apostolic 
 dignity — it is that they are disinterested, gratui- 
 tous, freely given. 
 
 The functions of life are so closely knit to those 
 of existence that the divine freedom of a man's 
 vocation must perforce submit to the human neces- 
 sities of his profession. And the most passionate 
 and eager livers often understand little, and fare 
 ill, when it comes to matters of subsistence. But 
 all the superior functions of mankind are neces- 
 sarily and intrinsically gratuitous. 
 
 Neither Love, nor Science, nor Art can be 
 venally appraised. They are the divine three 
 persons of the human conscience. Only finite 
 things can be sold. Immortal things must bestow 
 themselves freely. 
 
 Therefore it is that the handiwork of Good- 
 ness, of Beauty, and of Truth defies the centuries ; 
 
NATURE AND ART 235 
 
 the very eternity of their first causes gives them 
 life. 
 
 "NEW heavens and a new earth." 
 
 Thus did the mighty captive of Patmos, the 
 prince of evangelists, foretell the end of time, in 
 the twenty -first chapter of the Apocalypse ; a 
 stately vision, culminating in the hosannah of the 
 " New Jerusalem, the Holy City, coming down 
 from God out of heaven prepared as a bride 
 adorned for her husband." What mighty seers 
 they were ! those great Hebrew poets ! those 
 diviners of the growth and destinies of the human 
 race ! — Job, David, Solomon, the Prophets, St. 
 Paul, and the Apostle John, who was per- 
 mitted to learn the secrets of eternity and to 
 peer into the unfathomable depths of infinite 
 generations ! 
 
 That New Jerusalem, that chosen country, is 
 human selection, the victorious solver of all 
 enigmas, bearing, like some glorious trophy, all 
 the sacramental veils the world has dropped one 
 by one along the centuries — " the faithful steward 
 entering into the joy of his Lord," who, under the 
 glorious light of the "New Heaven," lays the 
 " New Earth " regenerated, recreated, according 
 
236 CHARLES GOUNOD 
 
 to the law expressed in the supreme formula : 
 " Verily, I say unto you, Except a man be born 
 again he can in no case enter into the kingdom 
 of heaven " — at the feet of his Father and his 
 God. 
 
THE ACADEMY OF FRANCE 
 AT ROME 
 
THE ACADEMY OF FRANCE 
 AT ROME 
 
 At a juncture like the present, when, under the 
 mask of so-called naturalism in Art, an effort is 
 being made to cast disfavour upon that noble and 
 beneficent institution, the Academy of France in 
 Rome, it appears to me a duty to enter a protest 
 against the destructive tendencies, which, could 
 they aspire to the dignity of being called doc- 
 trines, would end in nothing short of the utter 
 obliteration of the Fine Arts, in their highest 
 sense, and which, moreover, have no foundation 
 save in the very emptiest and most frivolous of 
 arguments. The advocates of what they denomi- 
 nate "Modern Art" (as if Art did not belong 
 to all times) make an unconditional attack on 
 the licole de Rome ; and their ultimatum is 
 that the Villa Medicis, being a hotbed of artistic 
 infection, must be forthwith done away with. 
 This constitutes the " delenda Carthago " of the 
 
 Anti- Roman party. 
 
 239 
 
24° CHARLES GOUNOD 
 
 I shall not here undertake to plead ex professo 
 in favour of the painters, sculptors, architects, and 
 engravers whom the State sends year by year to 
 Rome, thus ensuring them, in return for the hopes 
 their talent has excited, constant and assiduous 
 communion with the immortal teachers of the past, 
 known as "the Masters." Myself a musician, I 
 will confine myself to the points affecting the 
 interests of musical composers, the more so as 
 in their case especially a residence in Rome is 
 looked on as being utterly useless and meaning- 
 less. But, seeing the cause of one art is the 
 cause of Art in general, anything I may say 
 about musicians will naturally apply to all other 
 artists. 
 
 The first thing that strikes me is the fact that 
 this bitterness against the Roman school is the 
 mere outcome of a desire, more or less frankly 
 expressed, which sums up in itself the whole of 
 the opposition programme. " Down with the 
 teachers ! Let us use our own wings ! " There 
 is no doubt this is what is meant by " Modern 
 Art." 
 
 No more education, then ; no more acquired 
 and transmissible ideas. That means no capital, 
 and therefore no more patrimony nor inheritance. 
 
THE ACADEMY OF FRANCE AT ROME 241 
 
 No past, therefore, no more traditions, no more 
 intellectual paternity. In other words, the reign 
 of spontaneous generation. For there is nothing 
 between the two. We must have either teaching 
 or intuitive knowledge. And note well that those 
 who hug this system are the very men who are 
 always talking about "the School of the Future." 
 By what right, I ask, do they invoke the Future, 
 when within a few days they must have become 
 in its eyes that very Past they will have none 
 of? A wonderfully absurd self-contradiction, this 
 "kingdom divided against itself!" Show me 
 any single method of employing human faculties 
 which rests on such a theory ! Law ? Physical 
 science ? Chemistry ? Astronomy ? Mechanics ? 
 Is not man primarily an educated being ? Does 
 not his whole existence depend on an amassed 
 capital of knowledge ? Is he not taught to read, 
 and write, and ride, and walk, and use weapons, 
 and play on various instruments ? Has not each 
 department its own special form of gymnastics ? 
 And what is a school, after all, but a gymnasium ? 
 Well, you say, let us grant all that, as far as 
 science is concerned, and handicraft. But how 
 about genius ? No one can learn to be a genius. 
 You either have that gift or have it not, and it 
 
S42 CHARLES GOUNOD 
 
 can no more be bestowed on him who has it not 
 than it can be taken from him who has it. That 
 is a true and uncontested fact. But it is no less 
 true that, as a great artist, 1 well qualified to speak, 
 once said, "Art without science does not exist." 
 
 Genius, indeed, is incommunicable, for it is 
 an essentially personal gift. But that which is 
 communicable and transmissible is the language 
 whereby genius is formulated and expressed, 
 and failing which it must e'en remain dumb and 
 impotent. Were not Raphael, Mozart, Beethoven, 
 all men of genius ? Did they conceive that fact 
 authorised their scornful rejection of the tradi- 
 tional masters, who not only initiated them into 
 the practice of their art, but also pointed them the 
 surest road to follow, thus saving the immense 
 waste of time involved in seeking a certainty 
 already assured to them by the experience of 
 past centuries ? This claim to upset historical 
 truths by dint of sheer sophistry is a down- 
 right mockery of common-sense. It amounts to 
 asserting that no orator nor author need learn 
 his language nor study his syntax and his dic- 
 tionary. Theophile Gautier was right when he 
 said, " If I write better than other people, it is 
 
 1 Monsieur Ingres. 
 
THE ACADEMY OF FRANCE AT ROME 243 
 
 because I have learnt my business, and I have a 
 greater number of words at my command." 
 
 But, say the objectors, there are numbers of 
 eminent artists who never studied at Rome at all. 
 
 This is perfectly true, and I hasten to add a 
 fact, on which the opposition has no particular 
 reason to plume itself so very proudly — that it by 
 no means necessarily follows that a student at 
 the Ecole de Rome should emerge from it a very 
 superior artist. But what does this prove ? That 
 Rome cannot perform a miracle and bestow what 
 Nature has withheld. This is clear as daylight. 
 It really would be too much to expect genius to 
 be obtained at the price of a journey which any- 
 body is free to make. But that is not the 
 question at all. The question really is, whether, 
 granted the possession of an artistic organisa- 
 tion, the influence Rome exercises thereon is not 
 incontestable and unrivalled, in the matter of 
 intellectual elevation and artistic development. 
 
 This view leads me to consider the utility of 
 a residence in Rome as regards musical com- 
 posers. 
 
 We will admit, the opposition say, that painters, 
 sculptors, architects, and engravers should be sent 
 to Italy. They will there find a considerable 
 
244 CHARLES GOUNOD 
 
 number of masterpieces, deeply interesting at all 
 events, in connection with the different arts they 
 practise. But what is a musician to do at Rome ? 
 What music is he to listen to ? What artistic 
 benefit can he gain there ? 
 
 The fact is, that the people who make such 
 objections must have given very little thought 
 to the subject of what an artist is. Do they 
 really believe he is given over utterly to tech- 
 nique, as though mechanical proficiency consti- 
 tuted his whole art ? As if a man might not 
 be a clever mechanical performer and yet a 
 commonplace artist ; a consummate rhetorician, 
 and a poor writer, or a cold speaker ! 
 
 What ! are eloquence and virtuosity one and 
 the same thing ? Is there no difference betwixt 
 the man and the instrument he uses ? Have 
 men forgotten that the artisan is but part of the 
 artist, that is, the man — that it is the man who 
 must be touched, enlightened, carried away, nay, 
 transfigured, so that he shall be lost in passionate 
 adoration of that immortal beauty which ensures 
 not momentary success alone, but the never- 
 ending empire of those masterpieces which have 
 been the light and guide of human art from 
 the ancients down through the Renaissance to 
 
THE ACADEMY OF FRANCE AT ROME 245 
 
 our own timej, and will endure after it, and for 
 ever! 
 
 Is this a real or merely a feigned ignorance of 
 those immutable laws of nutrition and assimilation 
 which govern the growth and perfect development 
 of every organism ? If music is the only thing 
 necessary to the development and maturity of a 
 musician's talent, I would not only ask why he 
 should be sent to Rome, since there is no object 
 in his gazing on the frescoes of Raphael and 
 Michael Angelo on the Vatican hill, the home of 
 all the oracles ? I would fain know why he 
 should read Homer, Virgil, Tacitus, Juvenal, 
 Dante and Shakespeare, Moliere and La Fon- 
 taine, Bossuet and Pascal — all, in a word, of the 
 great nurturers of formulated human thought ? 
 What is the use ? Literature is not music. . . . 
 No ! in good truth. But it is Art, which is ancient 
 and modern too. Art, universal and eternal. 
 And in Art the artist (not the artisan) must find 
 his food, his health, his power, his very life. After 
 all, what is this so-called naturalism in Art ? I 
 confess I should be glad to be informed as to the 
 sense attached to the word by those who seem in- 
 clined to make it the banner of a grievance, and the 
 symbol of a claim to a right denied by despotic 
 
246 CHARLES GOUNOD 
 
 routine. Does it mean that Nature should be 
 the foundation and starting point in all art ? In 
 that sense all the Masters are agreed. But Art 
 cannot stop there, and Raphael, whom I suppose 
 I may take to have known Nature well, gives us 
 the following definition, as admirable as it is per- 
 haps over-spontaneous : " Art does not consist 
 in representing things as Nature made them, but 
 as she should have made them ! " Sublime words, 
 telling us clearly that Art is above all a preference, 
 a true selection, and thus presupposing a training 
 of the artist's understanding to a special standard 
 of appreciation. 
 
 If Nature is everything, and education counts 
 for nothing — if the common herd knows as much 
 as the Masters, then how comes it that time so 
 constantly reverses those ephemeral judgments 
 which have so often showered transports of ap- 
 plause on works soon to be forgotten, or looked 
 askance on masterpieces which have since been 
 hailed with admiration by the infallible verdict of 
 posterity ? 
 
 I freely admit that the general public may be 
 competent to judge a play — and even this may be 
 contested when one remembers what an immense 
 number of works held our fathers spell-bound, and 
 
THE ACADEMY OF FRANCE AT ROME 247 
 
 leave us cold and indifferent. But even allow- 
 ing for these ups and downs of popularity, it 
 cannot be said that Art resides in the drama 
 only. There is not the faintest analogy between 
 the violent shock caused by some striking thea- 
 trical situation and the calm and noble delight to 
 be derived from an exquisite and perfect work of 
 art. Nobody could think of comparing the feel- 
 ings produced by a melodrama to the emotion 
 roused by a contemplation of the Frieze of the 
 Parthenon, or the " Dispute du St. Sacrement." 
 A whole abyss lies betwixt the domain of mere 
 sensation and that of intellectual feeling. 
 
 And what shall I say concerning the incalcu- 
 lable benefits to be found in the quietness and 
 security of such a retreat, far from the feverish 
 roar and constant anxiety of daily life ? What of 
 the silence, which teaches a man to listen to what 
 is passing within his own soul ? What of the 
 deep solitudes, the distant horizons whose majestic 
 lines seem never to lose their magic power of 
 raising the mind to the level of the great deeds 
 they saw performed ? What of the Tiber, with 
 its stern waters, eloquent of the crimes they have 
 engulphed, and the calm of that Roman Campagna 
 through which they roll ? 
 
248 CHARLES GOUNOD 
 
 And Rome herself — alone — the triple city, on 
 whose head the centuries have set the proud 
 tiara which her Supreme Pontiff wears — shed- 
 ding the undying light of Truth, the immortal, 
 over all the earth ! What a standpoint ! What a 
 noble diapason we have here ! What surroundings 
 for the man who knows what meditation means ! 
 
 Let us have no more flaunting of these equi- 
 vocal and noisy titles, naturalism, realism, and 
 so forth! Art is Nature, yes, in the first place ; 
 but Nature verified and registered, weighed — 
 judged, in a word, before the tribunal of a dis- 
 cernment which analyses, and a reason which 
 rectifies and restores her. Art is a repara- 
 tion of the failures and forgetfulness of Reality. 
 It is the immortalisation of mortal things by a 
 wise process of elimination, not by a blind and 
 servile worship of their defective and perishable 
 qualities. At all costs and against all comers, 
 then, let us preserve our splendid Ecole de Rome, 
 whose archives bear such names as those of 
 David, Ingres, Flandrin, Regnault, Duret, Hdrold, 
 Halevy, Berlioz, Bizet — none of which, as far as 
 I am aware, warrant the scornful pity under which 
 some people would fain wither a dynasty already 
 over a century old. 
 
THE ACADEMY OF FRANCE AT ROME 249 
 
 Let us put forth all our strength to defend the 
 sacred retreat which shelters our growing artist, 
 frees him from premature anxiety concerning his 
 daily bread, and forewarns and forearms him, not 
 against the temptation to mere money -getting 
 only, but against the vulgar triumphs of a paltry 
 and evanescent popularity. 
 
THE ARTIST AND MODERN 
 SOCIETY 
 
THE ARTIST AND MODERN 
 SOCIETY 
 
 The immense extension of social relations in 
 modern times has had considerable influence on 
 artistic life and work ; an influence which, if I 
 mistake not, has done more harm than good. 
 
 Formerly, and not so very long ago either, 
 an artist, like a man of learning, was held, and 
 justly so, to be a member of one of the great 
 corporations of intellectual workers. He was 
 looked on as a sort of recluse, whose retreat 
 was sacred from disturbance. Men would have 
 hesitated to tear him from the silence and medi- 
 tation without which the conception and produc- 
 tion of healthy work which will withstand the 
 onslaught of Time — that merciless judge who 
 "never spares aught he did not help to make" 
 — becomes difficult, if not utterly impossible. 
 
 Nowadays, the artist is no longer his own master. 
 He belongs to the world at large. He is worse 
 
 than its target. He is its prey. His own personal 
 
 253 
 
254 CHARLES GOUNOD 
 
 and productive life is almost entirely absorbed, 
 swamped, squandered, in so-called social obliga- 
 tions, which gradually stifle him in that network 
 of sham and barren duties which go to make up 
 many an existence devoid of serious object or 
 high motive. In a word, society eats him up. 
 
 Now, what is society? It is an aggregation 
 of individuals who are afraid of being bored, and 
 whose sole idea is to get away from their own 
 selves, because of the terror with which the idea 
 of being left in their own sole company inspires 
 them. 
 
 Once we begin to tot up the amount of time 
 levied on the artist's working hours by the con- 
 stantly increasing number of small calls struggling 
 and fighting for his attention all day long, we 
 wonder how, by what extra activity, what effort 
 of concentration, he contrives to perform his chief 
 duty — that of doing honour to the career he has 
 chosen, and to which his best powers and his 
 highest faculties by right belong. It must surely 
 be admitted that in removing the barrier which 
 its scornful indifference, rather than its intelligent 
 discretion, had placed between itself and artists in 
 general, modern society has done them a mischief 
 in no way atoned for by the attractions it offers. 
 
THE ARTIST AND MODERN SOCIETY 255 
 
 Moliere, whose searching glance so deeply 
 fathomed human weaknesses, and who por- 
 trayed them with such an unerring hand, ad- 
 dressed the following lines, full of the deepest 
 wisdom and the healthiest philosophy, to the 
 great Colbert : — 
 
 " L'e'tude et la visite ont leurs talents a part 
 Qui se donne a la Cour se derob6 a son art. 
 Un esprit partage" rarement s'y consomme 
 Et les emplois de feu demandent tout un homme." 
 
 Let any one try to realise what^ can in fair- 
 ness be expected from the mind of a man inces- 
 santly torn hither and thither by evening parties, 
 dinners, perpetual invitations to social gatherings 
 of every sort, a mass of correspondence which 
 leaves him no peace, and the guilty authors of 
 which never dream of saying to themselves, " I 
 am stealing this man's time and thoughts, his 
 very life ; " and by all the petty tyrannies, in 
 fine, which go to make up that monster one, 
 called the indiscretion of the public. 
 
 And then the visitors, the crowd of idle and 
 curious loungers, who assail your privacy from 
 dawn till dark ! Somebody says, " That's all 
 your own fault — you can say you are not at 
 home." Very fine indeed ! But how about those 
 
256 CHARLES GOUNOD 
 
 letters of introduction, frequently requesting some 
 service on your part which you cannot well re- 
 fuse ? You make up your mind to do your duty, 
 and the visitor is shown in. 
 
 " Excuse me ; I fear I disturb you ! " 
 
 "Well, frankly, yes!" 
 
 " I beg your pardon ; I will not stay now. I'll 
 call another time." 
 
 " Oh, pray don't ! " 
 
 " But — when can I see you without disturbing 
 you?" 
 
 " The fact is, I am always busy when I am at 
 home." 
 
 " Are you really always so hard at work ? " 
 
 "Yes, always, unless I am interrupted." 
 
 " Oh, I am so sorry to trouble you ! But I 
 will only detain you a very few minutes." 
 
 "Well, well, sir, that's long enough to kill a 
 man, not to mention an idea ! But as you are 
 here, pray proceed." 
 
 This is a sample of what occurs daily ; and 
 I speak here of artists as a general class. But 
 there is a certain category of artists who have 
 quite special advantages in this line. I can speak 
 out of my own experience, for I refer to musicians- 
 A painter or a sculptor can easily protect his 
 
THE ARTIST AND MODERN SOCIETY 257 
 
 working hours by mercilessly closing his door. 
 He can plead a sitting model, or, if the worst 
 comes to the worst, he can wield the brush or 
 chisel even in the presence of visitors. But 
 the musician ? His case is quite different. As 
 his work can be done in daylight, people take 
 his evenings to provide amusement for their 
 guests ; and as he can work at night, they come 
 and waste and fritter away his days without 
 the slightest scruple. "And besides," they say, 
 " musical composition is such an easy thing ! It 
 is not a matter of labour ; it comes of itself, an 
 inspiration ! " 
 
 My readers cannot have any conception of the 
 innumerable and indiscreet requests to which a 
 musician is daily exposed — the crowds of young 
 pianists, violinists, vocalists, composers, poets 
 (lyric or otherwise), teachers and inventors of 
 various methods, systems and theories, editors 
 of periodicals, pestering you to take their publica- 
 tions ; not to mention the requests for auto- 
 graphs, photographs — the albums and the fans, 
 and what not, sent for your signature. It all 
 amounts to a perfect nightmare, and the musician 
 is turned into a sort of national property to which 
 the public has right of access at any and every 
 
 R 
 
258 CHARLES GOUNOD 
 
 hour. To be brief, our houses are not in the 
 street any more ; the street is in our houses. Our 
 whole life is devoured by idlers, inquisitive folk, 
 loungers who are bored with themselves, and 
 even by reporters of all sorts, who force their 
 way into our homes, to inform the public not only 
 as to our private conversation, but as to the 
 colour of our dressing-gowns and the cut of our 
 working-jackets ! 
 
 Well ! That is all wrong, and unhealthy. The 
 precious delicacy, the modesty of feeling, which 
 only lives by quiet contemplation, grows paler 
 and more wilted, day by day, in that unceasing 
 rout, from which the artist brings back nought 
 but a superficial, breathless, feverish activity, 
 tossing convulsively among the ruins of the intel- 
 lectual balance he has lost for ever. 
 
 Farewell to those hours of calm and luminous 
 peace, wherein alone a man can see and hear the 
 workings of his own soul ! The noble sanctuary 
 of thought and of emotion, gradually forsaken for 
 the excitements of the outer world, will soon be 
 nothing but a dark and gloomy dungeon, wherein 
 the spirit that knows not how to live in silence 
 must die of weariness. 
 
 If the hours thus spent were even not spent in 
 
THE ARTIST AND MODERN SOCIETY 259 
 
 vain! If they were only bestowed on people of 
 some capacity ! If they served to cheer none but 
 truly courageous souls ! 
 
 But think of the waste of time ! — the empty 
 conversations. Think of the amount of valueless 
 stuff in that ocean of intercourse, which neither 
 adds nor bestows one tittle of value to the total ! 
 
 To sum it up, the real plague spot is the people 
 who are bored, and who must needs kill other 
 men's time, lest their own should kill them by its 
 weight. 
 
 To be bored ! To bore one's own self. To 
 try every imaginable dodge to get away from 
 oneself! Is there any poverty in all the world so 
 pitiful as this ? And what compensation for that 
 which is bestowed on them can be expected from 
 such a class ? 
 
 There are certain current opinions, the sub- 
 stance of which people seldom trouble themselves 
 to verify, and which form the huge patrimony of 
 the accepted absurdities. One of these is the 
 belief, the self-persuasion, that the sympathy and 
 protection of the social world are indispensable to 
 an artist's success. 
 
 Truly, those who accept such an illusion, and 
 cling to it, must have very little experience of 
 
26o CHARLES GOUNOD 
 
 the vivifying atmosphere of a profound artistic 
 conviction. 
 
 Social support ! It is not uncertain merely ; it 
 is the most inconstant, changeable thing on God's 
 earth. And further, it is only given, as a rule, 
 to those who no longer need it, just as the cour- 
 tiers in a certain famous opera overwhelm a 
 young gentleman, who has just become the re- 
 cipient of royal favour, with their offers of service. 
 But now that material existence takes the first 
 rank in most men's lives, can we wonder that 
 seeming is taken for being, and skilful manage- 
 ment for talent ? Once the hidden God, the God 
 whose kingdom is within us, is gone from us, we 
 must have idols. Therefore it is that we see so 
 many artists troubled about going here and there 
 and everywhere, leaning on that broken reed of 
 popular advertisement, the fragments of which lie 
 scattered on the weary path of many an unin- 
 spired mind and commonplace ambition. 
 
 One protection alone is worth the artist's pains, 
 and should be sought by him. His work must 
 be the perfectly sincere expression of his inner 
 feeling. His artistic production must be the out- 
 come of his personal life, the faithful enunciation 
 of his thought. Once that is done, conflicting 
 
THE ARTIST AND MODERN SOCIETY 261 
 
 opinions matter but little to him or it. A work 
 of art can only shed the amount of warmth which 
 has brought it into being, and which it never 
 loses. But the artist must have time to kindle 
 his fire and feed it. Hence a famous composer 
 placed the significant inscription on his door : — 
 
 " Those who come to see me do me honour. 
 Those who stay away do me a kindness." In 
 other words, " I am never at home to anybody." 
 
 Here, again, is another commonplace, equally 
 popular, and in very frequent use : — 
 
 "You'll kill yourself! You work too hard! 
 You really must have some rest ! Do come and 
 see us ! It will do you good ! It will distract 
 your thoughts ! " 
 
 Distract one's thoughts indeed! Why, that's 
 just what I complain of — what people are much 
 too fond of doing ! It's all very well to distract 
 one's thoughts at a set time chosen by oneself. 
 But to have one's thoughts distracted for one, at 
 the wrong time, means to thoroughly confuse 
 them and throw them out of gear. 
 
 Work a weariness, an actual danger, forsooth ! 
 Those who say so can know very little about it. 
 Labour is neither cruel nor ungrateful. It re- 
 stores the strength we give it a hundredfold, and, 
 
262 CHARLES GOUNOD 
 
 unlike your financial operations, the revenue is 
 what brings in the capital. 
 
 If there is one incessant worker on the face of 
 God's earth (and He alone knows how various 
 is its toil), it is the heart in man's body. On its 
 regular beat depend not only the continuance of 
 our respiration, but the circulation of our blood, 
 which carries and distributes the different ele- 
 ments necessary to the working of each organ 
 of our frame with such unerring discrimination. 
 This splendid organisation works on incessantly, 
 without a moment's pause, even while we sleep. 
 
 Supposing the heart were bidden not to work 
 so hard, to take a little rest — to amuse itself, 
 in short ? Now work, to the intellectual life, is 
 what the heart is in our physical life. It is 
 the nourishment, the circulation, the respiration 
 of our intelligence. Like every other sort of 
 gymnastic, it wearies those, and those only, who 
 are not accustomed to it. Work has been de- 
 scribed as a punishment, a hardship. It is a 
 healthy and blessed state. Look first at a fertile, 
 well-tilled field, and then at a strip of fallow 
 land? Is not the balance of happiness and 
 charm on the side of cultivation and abundant 
 growth ? 
 
THE ARTIST AND MODERN SOCIETY 263 
 
 It is not labour that kills. It is sterility. To 
 be fruitful is to be young and full of life. 
 
 Yet I would not be thought so crotchety, so 
 surly, such a hater of my kind, as to look on an 
 artist as . a sort of solitary. It is undoubtedly 
 true, and I willingly acknowledge it, that modern 
 society, in enlarging its borders, has multiplied 
 the artist's opportunities of sharing in various 
 social phases, and meeting many charming and 
 some very useful people. 
 
 But what, again, is all that worth, if it costs 
 us those hours of delicious calm — I had almost 
 said of divine hope — when we await (with a long- 
 ing less frequently disappointed than some would 
 think) the advent of a real emotion, or of some 
 deeply touching truth ? 
 
 What is all the glare of outside show beside 
 the inner light, serene and glowing, of the 
 beloved Ideal each artist follows without ever 
 wholly reaching it, but which yet draws us on 
 until we feel it loves us more even than we love it ? 
 
 What then must be the suffering inflicted on 
 the unhappy being torn from a sacred temple 
 and forced into a palace, even were it a thousand 
 times more dazzling than any in the Arabian 
 Nights? 
 
264 CHARLES GOUNOD 
 
 Every one will remember that famous line 
 from one of our greatest poets : 
 
 " Mon verre n'est pas grand, mais je bois dans mon 
 verre." 
 
 There is no necessity that every man's cup 
 should be of the same size. The great point 
 is, that each should be always full to the brim. 
 A dwarf, clothed from head to foot in golden 
 raiment, would be just as happy as a giant in 
 similar case, once granting supreme happiness 
 consists in being so attired. This is the ingenious 
 comparison by which St. Francois de Sales 
 explains how the elect are equal in happiness, 
 even when they are unequal in glory. So apt is 
 it and so subtle, that it may well be applied to 
 every degree in life and every form of perfection. 
 
 It is not given to every man to be one of 
 those majestic streams whose waters carry fertility 
 wherever they pass. But the humblest brooklet, 
 if it be pure and limpid, mirrors the sky as faith- 
 fully as the mightiest river, or the depths of the 
 ocean itself. 
 
 " I will bring her into the wilderness, and speak 
 comfortably unto her," says a Hebrew prophet ; 
 and the saintly author of the " Imitation " assures 
 
THE ARTIST AND MODERN SOCIETY 265 
 
 us that " Thy chamber, if thou continuest therein, 
 groweth sweet." 
 
 "Well, well!" says somebody else, as though 
 by way of compliment, " it can't be helped. You 
 must pay for being famous ! " It is high time 
 the folly of such remarks as this should be ex- 
 posed. It is a very doubtful advantage, in all 
 conscience, for a man to find himself preyed upon 
 because he is no longer obscure. It cannot be 
 pointed out too often that the artist's work, not 
 his person, is public property. And there can be 
 no powerful, durable, homogeneous production 
 if his work is to be incessantly mangled and cut 
 up by interruptions. So let society lay to heart 
 the parting counsel given by Moliere to the great 
 Minister I have already mentioned : — 
 
 " Souffre que, dans leur art, s'avangant chaque jour, 
 Par leurs ouvrages seuls ils te fassent la cour ! " 
 
 The artist who gives himself up too much to 
 social intercourse runs yet another risk, concern- 
 ing which it may not be amiss to say a word or 
 two. 
 
 By dint of living in the buzz of so many varied 
 opinions, and admirations, and criticisms, and in- 
 fatuations for some one or other of the fashionable 
 
266 CHARLES GOUNOD 
 
 art productions of the moment, he gradually comes 
 to lose confidence in himself, in his own artistic 
 nature, in those dictates of his personal feeling 
 which at one time led him onward, and he ends 
 by finding himself in a hopeless maze. The inner 
 voice which should guide him is lost in the noise 
 of the tempest, and he looks, and looks in vain, 
 to the caprices of a favour that varies with the 
 fashions for a support it is incapable of afford- 
 ing him. Some people say that when you hear 
 a bell strike, you hear only one sound. That 
 depends entirely on the metal and the founding 
 of the bell. If those be perfect, the sound pro- 
 duced is a delightful series of harmonic vibra- 
 tions. 
 
 But what could be more hideous than to hear 
 all the bells in the town strike at once ? When, 
 on a thundery day, which makes us feel our 
 breath oppressed and painful, we say "the air is 
 heavy," we use an inappropriate word. The air 
 really is too light. What we call weight is no- 
 thing but rarefaction ; there is less air than we 
 require to enable us to breathe freely. The same 
 thing applies to the intellectual atmosphere. The 
 man of learning, the artist, the poet, and many 
 beside, each has his own special atmosphere, and 
 
THE ARTIST AND MODERN SOCIETY 267 
 
 must therefore breathe or choke under his own 
 special conditions. Let us not snatch any one of 
 them from his own life-giving element, nor stifle 
 him under what Joseph de Maistre has so well 
 called "the horrible weight of Nothingness." 
 
 I know, and I freely confess it, your artist is a 
 being apart, strange, abnormal, whimsical, freak- 
 ish — an oddity, in fact. Well, grant it all. If 
 his peculiarities cause discomfort, he suffers by 
 them too, and much more, very often, than people 
 think. But, after all, his shortcomings may be 
 forgiven for the sake of what he is, and it may be 
 that his value is owing in part to what be lacks. 
 He must be taken as he is, or left alone. There 
 is no other way to enable him to become all he 
 has it in him to be. Ch. Gounod. 
 
 THE END 
 
 Printed by Baiaantyne, Hanson & Co, 
 Edinburgh and London 
 
5n&cs of autbors. 
 
 
 PAGE 
 
 
 PAGE 
 
 
 PAGE 
 
 
 PAGE 
 
 About . 
 
 • 32 
 
 Dubois 
 
 . IX 
 
 Knight 
 
 • IS 
 
 Rett . 
 
 ■ aS 
 
 Alexander. 
 
 ■ 27 
 
 Dudeney . 
 
 33. 30 
 
 Kraszewski 
 
 • 29 
 
 Rembrandt 
 
 - 4 
 
 Allan . 
 
 . 10 
 
 Du Tolt . 
 
 11 
 
 Kroeker . 
 
 • >7 
 
 Renan 
 
 7. *4 
 
 Allen . 
 
 • 30 
 
 Eeden .. . 
 
 3 £ 
 
 Kropotkine 
 
 . 18 
 
 Ricci . f 
 
 4 
 
 Ansorge , 
 
 . 10 
 
 Ellwdnger 
 
 ■ '5 
 
 Landor . 
 
 . 10 
 
 Richter , 
 
 • IS 
 
 Anstey . . 
 Arbuthnot 
 
 ■ U 
 
 Ely . . 
 
 . 14 
 
 Lawson 
 
 > 5 
 
 K'iddell . 
 
 3= 
 
 . 21 
 
 Evans . . 
 
 5, 21 
 
 Le Caron . 
 
 . 7 
 
 Rives. 
 
 28 
 
 Armstrong 
 
 ■ 3 
 
 Farrar . 
 
 ■ *5 
 
 Lee (Vernon)" 
 
 . 26 
 
 Roberts (A. von) 
 Roberts (CG. D 
 
 32 
 
 Aston 
 
 r 9 
 
 Ff 1 nald . 
 
 - 23 
 
 Leland 
 
 . 7 
 
 ) • » 
 
 Atherton . 
 
 ■ 27 
 
 Ferruggia . 
 
 ■ 29 
 
 Le Querdec 
 
 . 8 
 
 Robins . . 
 
 . 6 
 
 Baddeley . 
 
 9. 17 
 
 Fitch . 
 
 
 Leroy-Beauiieu 
 
 • 9 
 
 Robins (Elizabell 
 
 )s5, 30 
 
 Balestier . 
 
 22, 24, 27 
 
 Fitzmauritz-Kel 
 
 y ■ 19 
 
 Lie . . 
 
 - 29 
 
 Robinson . 
 
 ■ 25 
 
 Barnett 
 
 2 
 
 Fitz Patrick 
 
 10, 27 
 
 Linton 
 
 - 24 
 
 Rostand . 
 
 . 16 
 
 Barrett 
 
 2 7. 3 J 
 
 Fleming 
 
 • *7 
 
 Little (A.) . 
 
 . IB 
 
 Russell 
 
 . 18 
 
 Battershall 
 
 , 22 
 
 1- la ni 111 a Hon 
 
 . 21 
 
 Little (Mrs. A.) 
 
 . 28 
 
 Saintsbury 
 
 . 12 
 
 Beames . 
 
 - 24 
 
 Forhes (A.) 
 
 - 15 
 
 Locke 
 
 24.30 
 
 St. Simon " 
 
 ■ 5 
 
 Behrs 
 
 . S 
 
 Forbes (H. O.) 
 
 . 18 
 
 Lowe . 
 
 7. '5 
 
 Salaman {/. S.) . 
 Salaman (M. C.) 
 
 . 21 
 
 Bellamy . 
 
 Bendall . 
 
 . 22 
 
 Fothergill . 
 
 . 32 
 
 Lowry 
 
 . 28 
 
 - I 5 
 
 - 17 
 
 Franzos . 
 
 " 29 
 
 Lutzow (Count] 
 
 . 19 
 
 Sarcey 
 
 7 
 
 Benedetti . 
 
 . 9 
 
 Frederic . 
 
 9. 2 3- 2 7 
 
 Lynch 
 
 . 32 
 
 Schulz 
 
 . IE 
 
 Benhara . 
 
 • 3 2 
 
 Fried . 
 
 
 Maartens . 
 
 . 28 
 
 Scidinore . 
 
 . 12 
 
 Benson (A. C.J 
 
 • 13 
 
 Fiirt wangler 
 
 ■ 4 
 
 McCabe . 
 
 . 14 
 
 Scudamore 
 
 • *5 
 
 Benson (E. F.) 
 
 . 22 
 
 Gardiner . 
 
 ■ is 
 
 Macdonell 
 
 . 19 
 
 Sedgwick . 
 
 25 
 
 Benthy 
 
 . 19 
 
 Garmo . 
 
 . 20 
 
 McFall . 
 
 . JO 
 
 Serao . 
 
 . 29 
 
 Berger . 
 
 • 19 
 
 Garner . 
 
 . 21 
 
 Mackenzie 
 
 . 9 
 
 Sergeant . 25 
 
 28, 32 
 
 Bermger . 
 
 • 30 
 
 C-trnett . 
 
 • 19 
 
 Mackinder 
 
 . 18 
 
 Shaler . . 
 
 . 21 
 
 Bjornson . 
 
 39. 3i 
 
 Gaulot . 
 
 . 8 
 
 Macnab . 
 
 . 24 
 
 Sheldon . 
 
 ■ 15 
 
 Blunt . 
 
 . 17 
 
 Giles . . 
 
 . 19 
 
 Madame . 
 
 - 5 
 
 Somerset . 
 
 XX 
 
 Bourgogne 
 
 . 6 
 
 Glasgow . 
 
 • 23 
 
 Maeterlinck 
 
 . 16 
 
 Southey . 
 
 . 6 
 
 Bowen 
 
 
 Golin . 
 
 . 2q 
 
 Mailing 
 
 • 32 
 
 stacpoole . 
 Steel . 
 
 • 35 
 
 Bowles 
 
 . 22 
 
 Gontcharoff 
 
 . 29 
 
 Malot 
 
 . 28 
 
 X S. 25 
 
 Boyesen . 
 
 ■ 13 
 
 Gore . 
 
 . 20 
 
 Marey . 
 Markham . 
 
 . 21 
 
 Stephen . 
 
 . 21 
 
 Brailstord . 
 
 . 22 
 
 Gounod 
 
 - 7 
 
 . i3 
 
 Steuart . 
 
 ■ 25 
 
 Brandes . 
 
 12. 19 
 
 Gosse 6, 8, 12, 1 
 
 ), 17,19,26 
 
 Marsh ' 
 
 • 3° 
 
 Stevenson . 16 
 
 25, 32 
 
 Brainier . 
 
 l8 
 
 Graham . 
 
 . 10 
 
 Masson . 
 
 . 8 
 
 Sutcliffe . 
 
 . 26 
 
 Briscoe 
 
 ■n 
 
 Grand 
 
 23. 32 
 
 M aude . 
 
 ■ '5 
 
 Swift . 
 
 • 3° 
 
 Brooke 
 
 22 
 
 Granville . 
 
 • z 7 
 
 Maupassant 
 
 22, 29 
 
 Symons . 
 Tadema . 
 
 12 
 
 Brown 
 
 10 
 
 Gray (Maxwell) 
 
 *7. 2 3 
 
 Maurice . 
 
 '5 
 
 - 3° 
 
 Brown & Griffi 
 
 !K . 20 
 
 Gras . 
 
 23, 32 
 
 Merriman . 
 
 . 14 
 
 Tallentyre 
 
 14 
 
 Buchanan . 
 
 13, 16, 32 
 
 Greard 
 
 • 4 
 
 Michel . 
 
 . 4 
 
 Tasma 
 
 38,32 
 
 Bunyan 
 
 3 
 
 Griffiths . 
 
 ■ 20 
 
 Mieville . 
 
 10 
 
 Thompson 
 
 . XX 
 
 Burgess . 
 
 8 
 
 Guerber . 
 
 - 21 
 
 Mitford 
 
 28 
 
 Thomson . 
 
 10, 11 
 
 Byron 
 
 "3 
 
 Guyau . 
 
 ■ 14 
 
 Monk. 
 
 ,i° 
 
 Thomson (Basil) 
 
 . a6 
 
 Cahan 
 
 • 30 
 
 Gyp . 
 
 ■ 3° 
 
 Monkhouse 
 
 '3 
 
 Thurston . 
 
 . 90 
 
 Caine (Hall) 9, 
 
 22i 2J, }I 
 
 Hafiz . 
 
 ■ 17 
 
 Moore 
 
 27 
 
 Tirebuck . 
 
 ■ 3 s 
 
 Caine (R.). 
 
 >7 
 
 Hall . 
 
 ■ 17 
 
 Morse 
 
 24 
 
 Tolstoy . re 
 
 . ' 0, 29 
 
 Calvert 
 
 . II 
 
 Hamilton . 
 
 z 3. i<> 
 
 Muller 
 
 9 
 
 Tree . 
 
 * 17 
 
 Cambridge 
 
 • 27. 32 
 
 1 laminar . 
 
 
 Muntz 
 
 4 
 
 Trent . 
 
 19 
 
 Capes 
 
 . 22 
 
 Harland . 
 
 '. 2« 
 
 Murray (D. C.) 
 
 . 15 
 
 Turgener . 
 Underbill . 
 
 ■ 3 1 
 
 Carr . 
 
 22 
 
 Harris 
 
 ■ 21 
 
 Murray (G.) 
 
 • 19 
 
 ■ 15 
 
 Chester . 
 
 - "5 
 
 Hauptmann 
 
 ■ 16 
 
 Napoleon . 
 
 6 
 
 Upward . 
 
 - 3° 
 
 Clievrillon . 
 
 . 10 
 
 Heaton 
 
 ■ 5 
 
 Nicholson . 
 
 • 3 
 
 Uzanne 
 
 4 
 
 Clarke (A. W.) 
 
 . 22 
 
 Ileijermans 
 
 . 16 
 
 Nordau . 
 
 14.24 
 
 Valera . 
 
 ■ 29 
 
 Clarke (K. E.) 
 
 . 31 
 
 Heine . 
 
 8, n 
 
 N orris . 
 
 24 
 
 Vandam . 
 
 9 
 
 Coleridge . 
 
 6, 12 
 
 Henley . 
 
 . 3. 16 
 
 Nugent 
 
 . 6 
 
 Vazoff 
 
 • 29 
 
 Colmore . 
 
 . 27, 30 
 
 Hert wig . 
 
 20 
 
 Oelsner . 
 
 - 19 
 
 Verestchagin . 
 
 6 
 
 Colomb 
 
 . 15 
 
 Heussey . 
 
 • 7 
 
 Ogilvie . 
 
 Oliphant . 
 
 ■ >7 
 
 Verrall . 
 
 19 
 
 Corupayri. 
 
 • 20 
 
 [lichens . 
 
 . 24, 30 
 
 - is 
 
 Vincent . 
 
 IT 
 
 Compton . 
 
 3° 
 
 Hill . 
 
 - 7 
 
 Osbourne . 
 
 ■ 25 
 
 Vivaria 
 
 26 
 
 Conrad . 
 
 ■ 22 
 
 Hinsdale . 
 
 . 20 
 
 ( tuida 
 
 3 Z 
 
 Voynich . 
 Vuillier . 
 
 26 
 
 Cooper 
 
 . 32 
 
 Hirsch 
 
 • 14 
 
 Page . . 
 
 25 
 
 4 
 
 Coppe'e 
 
 . 27 
 
 Hogarth . 
 
 . 18 
 
 Paget. . 
 
 6 
 
 Wagner . 
 
 Wdliszewski 
 
 • *5 
 
 Couperus . 
 
 ■ 29 
 
 Holdich . 
 
 . 18 
 
 Pame 
 
 
 S, 8, 19 
 
 Crackanthorpe 
 
 22, 27 
 
 1 !oli U worth 
 
 24,30 
 
 Palacio-Valdes 
 
 29.32 
 
 Walker . 
 
 
 Crackanthorpe 
 
 [Mrs.' 30 
 
 Howard 
 
 24 
 
 Partsch . 
 
 . 18 
 
 Ward 
 
 '. 38 
 
 Crane. . 17, 
 
 22 jj, 31 
 
 Hughes ■ 
 
 20 
 
 Pasolini . 
 
 - 7 
 
 Wamh . 
 
 ■3. 8 
 
 Dallmeyer 
 
 . 21 
 
 Hugo . 
 
 . 6 
 
 Patmore . 
 
 • 17 
 
 Weitemeyer 
 
 9 
 
 D'Annunzio 
 
 • 2 3 
 
 Hungerford 
 
 • 32 
 
 Pearce 
 
 25.28 
 
 Wells, D. D. . 
 
 . 38 
 
 Davidson . 
 
 . 20 
 
 Hyne . . 
 
 28 
 
 Pendered . 
 
 . 25 
 
 Wells, H. G. . 
 
 *6. 31 
 
 Davis 
 
 ii, 23, 27 
 
 Ibsen . 
 
 16 
 
 Pennell . 
 
 • 9 
 
 West 
 
 
 Dawson (C. A. 
 
 • 17 
 
 Ingercol] . 
 
 12 
 
 Perry. 
 
 . 8 
 
 Whibley . 
 
 7. *7 
 
 Dawson (A. J.) 
 
 • 23 
 
 Irving (H. B.) 
 
 6 
 
 Phelps 
 
 28,32 
 
 Whistler . 
 
 ■ >3 
 
 De Bourdeille 
 
 ■ 5 
 
 Irving (Sir H.) 
 
 I? 
 
 Philips 
 
 ■ 25 
 
 White 
 
 . sfi 
 
 De Broglie 
 
 . 9 
 
 Jacobsen . 
 Jaeger 
 
 29 
 
 Pinero . 
 
 14.16 
 
 White (A.) 
 
 9 
 
 Decle 
 
 . 11 
 
 7 
 
 Pinloche . 
 
 . 20 
 
 Whitman . . 
 
 . ic 
 
 De Goncourt 
 
 - 7 
 
 James (Henry) 
 
 2 4 
 
 Praed 
 
 ■ 25 
 
 Wilken . 
 
 9 
 
 De Joinville 
 De Leva! 
 
 . 8 
 
 James (Lionel) 
 
 10 
 
 Pressense" . 
 
 . 6 
 
 Williams (G.) . 
 
 9 
 
 21 
 
 jepson 
 
 24 
 
 Pritchard . 
 
 ■ 25 
 
 Williams(E.E.) 
 
 • M 
 
 De Ligne . 
 
 - S 
 
 'Keary (E. M ) 
 
 ■ 5 
 
 Pugh 
 Puliga 
 
 3S.30- 
 
 Williams . . 
 
 . 5 
 
 De Quincey 
 Dibbs 
 
 . 6, 13 
 
 Keary (C. F.) 
 
 . 24 
 
 - 7 
 
 Wilson 
 
 • *4 
 
 . 27 
 
 Keeling 
 
 23 
 
 Quine 
 Raimond . 
 
 - 35 
 
 Wood 
 
 . aS 
 
 Dickinson . 
 
 . 23 
 
 Keltie 
 
 . x3 
 
 - 25. 30 
 
 Wy^koff . . 
 
 
 Dix . 
 
 • 2 3 
 
 Kennedy . 
 
 23 
 
 Rasponi . 
 
 . SI 
 
 Wynrtham . , 
 
 . XI 
 
 Dixon 
 
 • 23 
 
 Kimball . 
 
 '-0 
 
 Rawnsley . 
 
 . 11 
 
 ZangwUl . 
 
 . 96 
 
 Donne . 
 
 . 6 
 
 Kipling 
 
 3. - r 4 
 
 Raynor 
 
 . 14 
 
 Zola . 
 
 ■6, 38 
 
 Dowden . 
 
 . 19 
 
 Kirk . . 
 
 . 11 
 
 Rectus 
 
 . x8 
 
 ZZ. . 
 
 . «f 
 
 Dowson . 
 
 ■ 27 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
MR. HEINEMANN'S LIST. 
 
 Hrt anb 2)ecoratfon. 
 
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i8 MR. HEIN EM ANN'S LIST. 
 
 JEoucatfon ano Science. 
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MR. HEINEMANN'S LIST. 19 
 
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MR. HEINEMANN'S LIST. 23 
 
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24 MR. HEINEMANN'S LIST. 
 
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MR. HEINEMANN'S LIST. 25 
 
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26 MR. HEINEMANN'S LIST. 
 
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MR. HEINEMANN'S LIST. 27 
 
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