Autobiographical Reminiscences with Family Letters and Notes on Music Part 5

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, Arles, &c., till we reached Ma.r.s.eilles.

At Ma.r.s.eilles we took a "vetturino."

"Vetturino!" What memories the word recalls! 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 peacefully to admire those beautiful bits of scenery through or mayhap underneath which the snorting steam horse, devouring s.p.a.ce like any meteor, now whisks you like a parcel! In those days men travelled gradually, insensibly from one impression 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 merchandise. 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 fres.h.!.+ If only progress, that remorseless conqueror, 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, Trasimeno, Tuscany, Pisa, Lucca, Sienna, Perugia, Florence. A progressive and many-sided education, 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 tasting 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 n.o.blest 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 draughtsman, of his kind disposition, of his brilliant wit and conversational powers, with an admiration which, coming as it did from the lips of so distinguished an artist, const.i.tuted the most delightful 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.

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 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 significance 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 wilderness, and speak comfortably to her." So various is she in herself, and in such deep calm is everything about her lapped, that no conception of her immense _ensemble_ and prodigious wealth of treasures is possible at first. The Past, the Present, 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 he speaks, Rome has a universal language understood 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 downright idleness.

My favourite amus.e.m.e.nt was reading Goethe's "Faust," in French of course, as I knew no German. I read too, with great interest, "Lamartine'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 afterwards 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' interval, almost as soon as I arrived at the Villa Medecis.

Six weeks or so slipped away. My eyes had 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 becoming 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 universal 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 landscape 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 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 n.o.ble style, with its touch of pathos, stamped him in his mind as something of the ancient Greek, a worthy scion of aeschylus, 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.

Beethoven's symphonies I knew by heart, too, and these he pa.s.sionately 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.

n.o.body 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 frankness of his nature. He was full of candour and of n.o.ble 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 sensitive 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. Such were the characteristics of the excellent n.o.ble-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 const.i.tuents of perfect beauty.

Strength saves grace from degenerating into mere wanton charm, while grace purifies strength from all its coa.r.s.eness 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 exclusive. 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 better than most what to admire, and wherein beauty lay. But he was discreet. He knew full well how p.r.o.ne youthful enthusiasm is to fall down and wors.h.i.+p 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 recognise each other--are, for that very reason, the most incommunicable qualities about them, and thence he deduced the fact, first, that any imitation of them amounts to plagiarism, and, further, that such imitation must infallibly end in exaggeration, degenerating into absolute artistic vice.

This explanation of Monsieur Ingres's real character will partially account for the unjust accusation 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 was that the music was hard, dry, and stern. So much did he dislike it that he cried, "It's horrible! 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 composer's rugged and uneven style, he grasped the irony and banter in Charon's part, and the plaintive pleadings of the wandering Shades, who cannot get across the river, not having wherewithal 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 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 maistro, Cherubini, of whom he has left such a magnificent 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."

"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--