The life of Hector Berlioz as written by himself in his letters and memoirs — Background and Themes

und great difficulty in managing Adolph Adam, who was from Berlioz as the poles asunder.

First he went to Berlioz, who had flatly refused to make the slightest concession to Adam’s prejudices.

“Come,” said he, “do at least be amiable to Adam; you cannot deny that he is a musician, at any rate.”

“I don’t say he is not; but, being a great musician, how can he lower himself to comic-opera? If he chose he could _write such music as I do_.”

Undismayed, Alexandre went to Adam.

“You will give your vote to Berlioz, will you not, dear friend? Although you cannot appreciate each other, you will own that he is a thorough musician.”

“Certainly, he is a great musician, a really great one, but his music is awfully tiresome. Why!”--and little Adam straightened his spectacles--“why, if he chose he could compose ... as well as I do. But, seriously, he is a man of some importance, and I promise that, after Clapisson, who already has our votes, Berlioz shall have the next vacancy.”

By a strange coincidence, the next _fauteuil_ was Adam’s own, to which Berlioz was elected by nineteen votes.

In his weak state of health, Berlioz was quite unfit to face the innumerable worries incidental to the production of _The Trojans_. For seven years it had been his chief object in life, and if, as he said, he could have had everything requisite at his command, with unlimited capital to draw upon--as Wagner had with Louis of Bavaria--all might have been well. But to fight, contrive, temporise and propitiate all at once was more than his enfeebled frame and irascible spirit could stand.

Hence his great injustice to Carvalho, who, for Art’s sake, sacrificed money, time and reputation to an extent that crippled him for many years.

Embittered by the failure of his opera, which ran for about twenty-five nights, he shut himself up in his rooms with Madame Recio, his devoted mother-in-law, and an old servant, and from that time visited only a few intimate friends.

One last shock Fate held in store. Louis died of fever abroad, and for his lonely father life had no more savour--he simply existed, with, however, two last flashes of the old bright flame. One when, at Herbeck’s desire, he went to Vienna to conduct the _Damnation de Faust_, and the other when the Grand Duchess Helen prevailed on him to visit St Petersburg again.

That was the real end.

On leaving Russia he wandered drearily to Nice--a ghost revisiting its old-time haunts--then made one last appearance at Grenoble, and so the flame went out. He who had never peace in life was at rest at last.

Of his music this is not the place to speak. He has fully described his own ideas, others have analysed them, and we are now concerned with the man himself.

To this is due the somewhat disjointed form of the translation--the mixture of Memoir and Letters. It seemed the only possible way of showing Berlioz in all his aspects and of keeping the record chronologically correct.

Yet we could wish that he, who had so much affinity with England and its literature, could meet with due appreciation here.

He has founded no school (in spite of Krebs’ prophecy), unless the “programme music” now so much in vogue can be traced back to him, but, beginning with Wagner, every orchestral composer since his day owes him a debt of gratitude for his discoveries--his daring and original combinations of instruments, and his magnificent grouping and handling of vast bodies of executants.

1803. Louis Hector Berlioz born.

1822. Medical student in Paris.

1824. Mass failed at Saint-Roch under Masson.

1825. Mass succeeded.

1826. Failed in preliminary examination for Conservatoire competition.

1827. Passed preliminary and entered for competition. His _Orpheus_ declared unplayable.

1828. Third attempt. _Tancred_ obtained second prize. Saw Miss Smithson. Gave first concert.

1829. Fourth attempt. _Cleopatra._ No first prize given.

1830. Gained Prix de Rome with _Sardanapalus_. Marie Pleyel.

1831. Rome. _Symphonie Fantastique_ and _Lélio_.

1832. Concert at which Miss Smithson present on 9th December.

1833. Marriage. In November Henriette’s benefit and failure.

1834. Louis born. _Harold_ performed in November.

1835. _Symphonie Funèbre_ begun.

1837. _Benvenuto Cellini_ finished.

1838. Paganini’s present.

1839. _Romeo and Juliet._

1840. _Funèbre_ performed. First journey to Brussels.

1841. Festival at Paris Opera House.

1842-3. First tour in Germany.

1844. _Carnaval Romain._ Gigantic concert in the Palais de l’Industrie. Nice.

1845. Cirque des Champs Elysées concert. Marseilles. Lyons. Austria.

1846. Hungary. Bohemia. In December, failure of _Damnation de Faust_.

1847. Russia. Berlin. In November, London, as conductor at Drury Lane.

1848. London. In July, Paris. Death of Dr Berlioz.

1849. _Te Deum_ begun.

1850. _Childhood of Christ_ begun.

1851. Member of Jury at London Exhibition.

1852. _Benvenuto Cellini_ given by Liszt at Weimar. In March, London, _Romeo and Juliet_. May, conducted Beethoven’s _Choral Symphony_. June, _Damnation de Faust_.

1854. March, Henriette died. Dresden. Marriage with Mdlle. Récio.

1855. North German tour. Brussels. _Te Deum._ In June, London. _Imperial Cantata._ On Jury of Paris Exhibition.

1856. _The Trojans_ begun.

1858. Concerts in the Salle Herz brought in some thousands of francs.

1862. Marie Berlioz died. _Beatrice and Benedict_ performed at Baden.

1863. Weimar. _Childhood of Christ_ at Strasburg. In November, _The Trojans_.

1864. In August, made officer of Legion of Honour. Dauphiny. Meylan. Estelle Fournier.

1865. Geneva, to see Estelle.

1866. In December to Vienna, to conduct _Damnation de Faust_.

1867. In June Louis died. In November, Russia.

1868. Russia. Paris. Nice. In August, Grenoble.

1869. Died 8th March.

Decidedly ours is a prosaic century. On no other grounds can my wounded vanity account for the humiliating fact that no auspicious omens, no mighty portents--such as heralded the birth of the great men of the golden age of poetry--gave notice of my coming. It is strange, but true, that I was born, quite unobtrusively, at La Côte Saint-André, between Vienne and Grenoble, on the 11th December 1803.

As its name implies, La Côte Saint-André lies on a hillside overlooking a plain--wide, green, and golden--of which the dreamy majesty is accentuated by the mountain belt that bounds it on the southeast, being in turn crowned by the mystic glory of distant Alpine glaciers and snowy peaks.

Needless to say, I was brought up in the Catholic faith. This--of all religions the most charming, since it gave up burning people--was for seven years the joy of my life, and although we have since fallen out, I still retain my tender memories of it.

Indeed, so greatly am I in sympathy with its creed that, had I had the misfortune to be born in the clutches of one of the dreary schisms hatched by Luther and Calvin, I should certainly, at the first awakening of my poetic instinct, have thrown off its benumbing grasp and have flung myself into the arms of the fair Roman.

My sweet remembrance of my first communion is probably due to my having made it with my elder sister at the Ursuline convent, where she was a boarder.

At early morn, accompanied by the almoner, I made my way to that holy house. The soft spring sunlight, the murmuring poplars swaying in the whispering breeze, the dainty fragrance of the morning air, all worked upon my sensitive mind, until, as I knelt among those fair white maidens, and heard their fresh young voices raised in the eucharistic hymn, my whole soul was filled with mystic passion. Heaven opened before me--a heaven of love and pure delight, a thousand times more glorious than tongue has told--and thus I gave myself to God.

Such is the marvellous power of genuine melody, of heart-felt expression! Ten years later I recognised that air--so innocently adapted to a religious ceremony--as “When my beloved shall return,” from d’Aleyrac’s opera _Nina_.

Dear, dead d’Aleyrac! Even your name is forgotten now!

This was my musical awakening.

Thus abruptly I became a saint, and such a desperate saint! Every day I went to mass, every Sunday I took the communion, every week I went to confession in order to say to my director:

“Father, I have done nothing.”

“Well, my son,” would the worthy man reply, “continue.”

I followed his advice strictly for many years.

Louis Berlioz, my father, was a doctor. It is not my place to sing his praises. I need, therefore, only say that he was looked upon as an honoured friend, not only in our little town, but throughout the whole country side. Feeling acutely his responsibility as the steward of a difficult and dangerous profession, every minute he could spare from his sick people was given to arduous study, and never did the thought of gain turn him aside from his disinterested service to the poor and needy.

In 1810, the medical society of Montpellier offered a prize for the best treatise on a new and important point in medicine, which was gained by my father’s monograph on Chronic Diseases. It was printed in Paris, and many of its theories adopted by physicians, who had not the common honesty to acknowledge their source. This somewhat surprised my dear, unsophisticated father, but he only said, “If truth prevails, nothing else matters.”

Now (I write in 1848) he has long since ceased to practise, and spends his time in reading and peaceful thought.

Of the highest type of liberal mind, he is entirely without social, political, or religious prejudices; for instance, having promised my mother to leave my faith undisturbed, I have known him carry his tolerance so far as to hear me my catechism. This is considerably more, I must own, than I could do were my own son in question.

For many years my father has suffered from an incurable disease of the stomach. He scarcely eats at all, and nothing but constant and increasing doses of opium keep him alive. He has told me that, years ago, worn out by the prolonged agony, he took thirty-two grains at once.

“It was not as a cure that I took it,” he said, significantly.

But, strange to say, this terrific dose of poison, instead of killing him, gave him for some time a respite from his sufferings.

When I was ten years old he sent me to a priest’s school in the town to learn Latin, but the result not proving satisfactory he resolved to teach me himself.

And with the most untiring patience, the most intense care, my father became my instructor in history, literature, languages, geography--even in music.

Yet I must own that I do not think a solitary education like mine half as good for a boy as ordinary school life. Children brought up among relations, servants, and specially chosen friends only, do not get accustomed to the rough-and-tumble that best fits them to face the world. Real life is to them a dosed book, their angles are not rubbed off, and I know that, in my own case, at twenty-five I was still nothing but an awkward, ignorant child.

Indulgent as my father was over my work, yet, for a long while, he was unable to make me love the classics. It seemed impossible to me to concentrate my thoughts long enough to learn by heart a few lines of Horace and Virgil; impatient of the beaten track my wayward mind flew off to the entrancing unknown world of the atlas, roving gaily through the labyrinth of islands, capes, and straits of the Pacific and the Indian Archipelago. This was the origin of my love for travel and adventure.

My father truly said of me:

“He knows every isle of the South Seas, but cannot tell me how many departments there are in France!”

Every book of travel in the library was pressed into my service, and I should most certainly have run away to sea if we had lived in a seaport. My son inherits my taste. He chose the navy for his profession long ere he saw the sea. May he do honour to his choice!

However, in the end the love of poetry and appreciation of its beauty awoke in me. The first spark of passion that fired my heart and imagination was kindled by Virgil’s magnificent epic, and I well remember how my voice broke as I tried to construe aloud the fourth book of the Æneid. One day, stumbling along, I came to the passage where Dido--the presents of Æneas heaped around her--gives up her life upon the funeral pyre; the agony of the dying queen, the cries of her sister, her nurse, her women; the horror of that scene that struck pity even to the hearts of the Immortals, all rose so vividly before me that my lips trembled, my words came more and more indistinctly, and at the line--

“Quæsivit cœlo lucem ingemuitque reperta,”

Then my dear father’s delicate tact stepped in. Apparently noticing nothing, he said, gently:

“That will do for to-day, my boy; I am tired.”

And I tore away to give vent to my Virgilian misery unmolested.

Will it be credited that when I was only twelve years old, and even before I fell under the spell of music, I became the victim of that cruel passion so well described by the Mantuan?

My mother’s father, who bore a name immortalised by Scott--Marmion--lived at Meylan, about seven miles from Grenoble. This district, with its scattered hamlets, the valley of the winding Isère, the Dauphiny mountains that here join a spur of the Alps, is one of the most romantic spots I know. Here my mother, my sisters, and I usually passed three weeks towards the end of summer.

Now and then my uncle, Felix Marmion, who followed the fiery track of the great Emperor, would pay a flying visit during our stay, wreathed with cannon smoke and ornamented with a fine sabre cut across the face. He was then only adjutant-major in the Lancers; but young, gallant, ready to lay down his life for one look from his leader, he believed the throne of Napoleon as stable as Mont Blanc. His taste for music made him a great addition to our gay little circle, for he both sang and played the violin well.

High over Meylan, niched in a crevice of the mountain, stands a small white house, half-hidden amidst its vineyards and gardens, behind which rise the woods, the barren hills, a ruined tower, and St Eynard--a frowning mass of rock.

This sweet secluded spot, evidently predestined to romance, was the home of Madame Gautier, who lived there with two nieces, of whom the younger was called Estelle. Her name at once caught my attention from its being that of the heroine of Florian’s pastoral _Estelle and Némorin_, which I had filched from my father’s library, and read a dozen times in secret.

Estelle was just eighteen--tall, graceful, with large, grave, questioning eyes that yet could smile, hair worthy to ornament the helmet of Achilles, and feet--I will not say Andalusian, but pure Parisian, and on those little feet she wore ... pink slippers!

Never before had I seen pink slippers. Do not smile; I have forgotten the colour of her hair (I fancy it was black), yet, never do I recall Estelle but, in company with the flash of her large eyes, comes the twinkle of her dainty pink shoes. I had been struck by lightning. To say I loved her comprises everything. I hoped for, expected, knew nothing but that I was wretched, dumb, despairing. By night I suffered agonies, by day I wandered alone through the fields of Indian corn, or sought, like a wounded bird, the deepest recesses of my grandfather’s orchard.

Jealousy--dread comrade of love--seized me at the least word spoken by a man to my divinity; even now I shudder at the clank of a spur, remembering the noise of my uncle’s while dancing with her.

Every one in the neighbourhood laughed at the piteously precocious child, torn by his obsession. Perhaps Estelle laughed too, for she soon guessed all.

One evening, I remember, there was a party at Madame Gautier’s, and we played prisoner’s base. The men were bidden choose their partners, and I was purposely told to choose first. But I dared not, my heart-beats choked me; I lowered my eyes unable to speak. They were beginning to tease me when Estelle, smiling down from her beauteous height, caught my hand, saying:

“Come! I will begin; I choose Monsieur Hector.”

Does time heal all wounds; do other loves efface the first? Alas, no! With me time is powerless. Nothing wipes out the memory of my first love.

I was thirteen when we parted. I was thirty when, returning from Italy, I passed near St Eynard again. My eyes filled with tears at the sight of the little white house--the ruined tower. I loved her still!

On reaching home I heard that she was married; but even that could not cure me. A few days later my mother said:

“Hector, will you take this letter to the coach-office. It is for a lady who will be in the Vienne diligence. While they change horses ask the guard for Madame F., give her this letter, and look carefully at her. You may recognise her, although you have not met for seventeen years.”

Without suspicion I went on my errand and asked for Madame F. “I am she, Monsieur,” said a voice that thrilled my heart. “It is Estelle,” said my heart. Estelle! still lovely, still the nymph, the hamadryad of Meylan’s green slopes. Still lovely with her proud carriage, her glorious hair, her dazzling smile. But ah! where were the little pink shoes? She took the letter. Did she know me? I could not tell, but I returned home quite upset by the meeting. My mother smiled at me.

“So Némorin has not forgotten his Estelle,” she said. _His_ Estelle! Mother! mother! was that trick quite fair?

With love came music; when I say music I mean composition, for of course I had long since been able to sing at sight and to play two instruments, thanks, needless to say, to my father’s teaching.

Rummaging one day in a drawer, I unearthed a flageolet, on which I at once tried to pick out “Malbrook.” Driven nearly mad by my squeaks, my father begged me to leave him in peace until he had time to teach me the proper fingering of the melodious instrument, and the right notes of the martial song I had pitched on. At the end of two days I was able to regale the family with my noble tune.

Now, how strikingly this shows my marvellous aptitude for wind instruments. What a fruitful subject for a born biographer!

My father next taught me to read music, explaining the signs thoroughly, and soon after he gave me a flute. At this I worked so hard that in seven or eight months I could play quite fairly.

Wishing to encourage my talent, he persuaded several well-to-do families of La Côte to join together and engage a music-master from Lyons. He was successful in getting a second violin, named Imbert, to leave the Théâtre des Célestins and settle in our outlandish little town to try and musicalise the inhabitants, on condition that we guaranteed a certain number of pupils and a fixed salary for conducting the band of the National Guard.

I improved fast, for I had two lessons a day; having also a pretty soprano voice I soon developed into a pleasant singer, a bold reader, and was able to play Drouet’s most intricate flute concertos. My master had a son a few years older than myself, a clever horn-player, with whom I became great friends. One day, as I was leaving for Meylan, he came to see me.

“Were you going without saying good-bye?” he asked. “You may never see me again.”

His gravity struck me at the moment, but the joy of seeing Meylan and my glorious _Stella montis_ quite put him out of my head. But on my return home my friend was gone; he had hanged himself the very day I left, and no one has ever been able to discover why. It was a sad home-coming for me!

Among some old books I found d’Alembert’s edition of Rameau’s _Harmony_, and how many weary hours did I not spend over those laboured theories, trying vainly to evolve some sense out of the disconnected ideas. Small wonder that I did not succeed, seeing that one needs to be a past master of counterpoint and acoustics before one can possibly grasp the author’s meaning. It is a treatise on harmony for the use of those only who know all about it already.