The Yellow Book Volume II Part 5

There, at 8, Rue des Cultures, a rustic place enough, one might find Georges Bizet, seated in his favourite corner of the lovely garden, _en chapeau de canotier_, smoking his pipe and chatting to his friends. It had been the home of Jacques Halevy, and Bizet had been wont to do his courting there. Now the old man was no more, and in the long summer days, the daughter and the son--for Halevy had been as a father to Bizet--missed sorely the familiar figure hard at work with rake or hoe at his beloved flower-beds. They were the pa.s.sion of his later days, and they well repaid his care. Even in the middle of a lesson--and he taught up to well-nigh the last weeks of his life--would he rush out to uproot a noxious weed that might chance to catch his eye. "How well I remember my first day there," says Louis Gallet. "The war was not long finished, and the traces of it were with us yet. True, Paris had resumed her lovely girdle of green; but beneath this verdure reflected in the tardy waters of the Seine, there was enough still to tell the terrible tale of ruin. One could not go to Pecq or le Vesinet without some difficulty. Bizet, to save me trouble, had taken care to meet me at Rueil, whence we made for the little place where he was staying for the summer. The day was lovely, and 'Djamileh' made great strides as we talked and paced the pretty garden walks. This habit of discussing while walking, what was uppermost in his mind, was always, to me, a powerful characteristic of Georges Bizet. I do not remember any important discussion between us that did not take place during a stroll, or at all events whilst walking, if only to and from his study. We talked long that afternoon--of the influence of Wagner on the future of musical art, of the reception in store for 'Djamileh,' both by the public and by the Opera Comique itself. This latter, indeed, was no light matter. The Direction was then undertaken by two parties: that of Du Locle, tending towards advancement in every form; that of De Leuven, clinging with all the force of tradition to the past.

"Then in the evening nothing would do but Bizet should see me well on my way to Paris. The bridges were not yet restored. So we set off on foot, in company with Madame Bizet, to find the ferry-boat. How delicious was that walk by the little islets in the cool of the twilight; along the towing-path so narrow and overrun with growth that we were obliged to proceed in Indian file. And how merry we were, until perchance we stumbled on the fragment of a sh.e.l.l lying hidden in the gra.s.s, or came face to face with some majestic tree, still smarting from its wounds, when there would rise before us in all its vividness the terrible scene so recently enacted on that spot. Then we talked of the war and all its sorrows; and we tried to descry there on the right, in the shade of Mount Valerien, the spot where Henri Regnault fell.

"At length we found the ferry, and reached the other bank. There at the end of the path we could see the lights of the station; so we separated. And although I made many after visits, none remained so firmly fixed in my memory, or left me so happy an impression as did this, my first to Bizet's summer home."

During the siege itself, he had been forced to remain in Paris. But it was much against his will, and he seems to have chafed sorely at it.

Yet it is difficult to picture Bizet bellicose. "Dear friend," he writes to Guiraud, who was stationed at some outpost, "the description you give of the palace you are living in makes us all believe that luck is with you. But every day we think of the cold, the damp, the ice, the Prussians, and all the other horrors that surround you. As for me, I continue to reproach myself with my inaction, for in truth my conscience is anything but at rest; but you know well what keeps me here. We really cannot be said to eat any longer. Suzanne has just brought in some horse bones, which I believe are to form our meal.

Genevieve dreams nightly of chickens and lobsters."

Not till the following year, during the days of the Commune, do we find him at le Vesinet. Then he writes (also to Guiraud): "Here we are without half our things, without our books, without anything in fact, and absolutely there are no means of getting into Paris.... So, dear friend, if you have any news, do, I pray you, let us have it. I read the Versailles papers, but they tell their wretched readers (and expect them to believe it) that France is 'tres tranquille,' Paris alone excepted (_sic_). The day before yesterday was anything but tranquil. For twelve hours there was nothing but a continuous cannonade.... But _we_ are safe enough, for although the Prussian patrols continue to increase in number we are not inconvenienced by them, and they will not, in all probability, occupy le Vesinet. But it seems quite impossible to say how all this is going to end. I am absolutely discouraged, and what is more, I fear, dear friend, there is worse trouble ahead of us. I am off now to the village to look at a piano; I must work and try to forget it all."

He finished "Djamileh" at le Vesinet. It was produced at the Opera Comique in May of 1872. Gallet tells us that he did not write the book specially for Bizet. Under the t.i.tle of "Namouna," it had been given by M. du Locle to Jules Duprato, a musician and a "prix de Rome." But Duprato _paressait agreablement_, and never got much further with it than the composition of a certain _air de danse_ to the verses commencing: "Indolente, grave et lente," which are to be found also in Bizet's score. Then there came a time when the Opera Comique, truly one of the most good-natured of inst.i.tutions in its own peculiar way, so far belied its reputation as to tire of this idling on the part of M. Duprato. So the work pa.s.sed on to Bizet. He suggested change of t.i.tle, and "Namouna" became "Djamileh." But it remained nevertheless the poem of Musset.

"Je vous dirais qu' Ha.s.san racheta Namouna

Qu'on reconnut trop tard cette tete adoree Et cette douce nuit qu'elle avait esperee Que pour prix de ses maux le ciel la lui donna.

Je vous dirais surtout qu' Ha.s.san dans cette affaire Sent.i.t que tot ou tard la femme avait son tour Et que l'amour de soi ne vaut pas l'autre amour."

There you have the whole story. It is but an _etat d'ame_--a little love scene, simple enough in a way, yet so delicate and so full of colour. It was a matter of "atmosphere," not of structure, a masterpiece of style rather than of situation; and from its first rehearsal as an opera it was doomed. In truth, these rehearsals were amusing. There was old Avocat--they used to call him Victor--the typical _regisseur_ of tradition; a man who could tell of the _premieres_ of "Pre-aux-Clercs" and "La Dame Blanche," and, what is more, expected to be asked to tell of them. From his corner in the wings he listened to the music of this "Djamileh," his face expressive of a pity far too keen for words. But it was a matter of minutes only before his pity turned to rage, and eventually he stumped off to his sanctum, banging his door behind him with a vehemence that augured badly for poor Bizet. As for De Leuven, his co-director: had he not written. "Postillon de Lonjumeau"? and was it not the most successful work of Boiledieu's successor? The fact had altered his whole life.

Ever after, all he sought in opera was some similarity with Le Postillon. And there was nothing of Adam in this music, still less anything of De Leuven in the poem. That was sufficient for him.

"Allons," said he one day to Gallet, who arrived at rehearsal just as Djamileh was about to sing her _lamento_: "allons, vous arrivez pour le De Profundis."

As for the public, they understood it not at all, this charming miniature. "C'est indigne," cried one; "c'est odieux," from another; "c'est tres drole," said a third. "Quelle cacophonie, quelle audace, c'est se moquer du monde. Voila, ou mene le culte de Wagner a la folie. Ni tonalite, ni mesure, ni rythme; ce n'est plus de la musique," and the rest. The press itself was no better, no whit more rational. Yet this "Djamileh" was rich in premonition of those very qualities that go to make "Carmen" the immortal work it is. It so glows with true Oriental colour, is so saturate with the true Eastern spirit, as to make us wonder for the moment--as did Mr. Henry James about Theophile Gautier--whether the natural att.i.tude of the man was not to recline in the perfumed dusk of a Turkish divan, puffing a chibouque. Here the tints are stronger, mellower, and more carefully laid on than in "Les Pecheurs des Perles." There is, too, all the _bizarrerie_, as well as all the sensuousness of the East. Yet there is no obliteration of the human element for sake of the picturesque.

Wagnerism was the cry raised against it on all sides; yet, if it be anything but Bizet, it is surely Schumann. It was, in effect, all too good for the public--too fine for their vulgar gaze, their indiscriminating comment. And Reyer, fa.r.s.eeing amongst his fellows, spoke truth when he said in the _Debats_: "I feel sure that if M.

Bizet knows that his work has been appreciated by a small number of musicians--being _cognoscenti_--he will be more proud of that fact than he would be of a popular success. 'Djamileh,' whatever be its fortunes, heralds a new epoch in the career of this young master."

Then came "L'Arlesienne," as all the world knows, a dismal failure enough. It was to Bizet a true labour of love. From the day that Carvalho came to him proposing that he should add _des melodrames_ to this tale of fair Provence, to the day of its production some four months later, he was absorbed in it. The score as it now stands represents about half the music that he wrote. The prelude to the third act of "Carmen," and the chorus, "Quant aux douaniers," both belonged originally to "L'Arlesienne," The rest was blue pencilled at rehearsal. And of all the care he lavished on it, perhaps the finest, certainly the fondest, was given to his orchestra. Every instrument is ministered to with loving care. Luckily for him, fortunately too for us, he knew not then what sort of lot awaited this scrupulous score of his. He knew he wrote for Carvalho--for the Vaudeville; but that was all. And they gave him twenty-five musicians--a couple of flutes and an oboe (this latter to do duty too for the cor-anglais); one clarinet, a couple of ba.s.soons, a saxophone, two horns, a kettle-drum, seven violins, one solitary alto, five celli, two ba.s.s, and his choice of one other. The poor fellow chose a piano; but they never saw the irony of it. All credit to his little band, they did their best. But the most that they could do was to cull the tunes from out his score.

The consolation that we have is, that, so far as the piece as a piece is concerned, no orchestra in the world could have saved it. It was doomed to failure for all sorts of reasons. Daudet himself goes very near the mark when he says that "it was unreasonable to suppose that in the middle of the boulevard, in that coquettish corner of the Chaussee d'Antin, right in the pathway of the fas.h.i.+ons, the whims of the hour, the flas.h.i.+ng and changing vortex of all Paris, people could be interested in this drama of love taking place in the farmyard in the plain of Camargue, full of the odour of well-plenished granaries and lavender in flower. It was a splendid failure; clothed in the prettiest music possible, with costumes of silk and velvet in the centre of comic opera scenery." Then he goes on to tell us: "I came away discouraged and sickened, the silly laughter with which the emotional scenes were greeted still ringing in my ears; and without attempting to defend myself in the papers, where on all sides the attack was led against this play, wanting in surprises--this painting in three acts of manners and events of which I alone could appreciate the absolute fidelity. I resolved to write no more plays, and heaped one upon the other all the hostile notices as a rampart around my determination."

At this time Bizet seems to have come a good deal into contact with Jean Baptiste Faure. They met frequently at the Opera. "You really must do something more for Bizet," said the baritone to Louis Gallet.

"Put your heads together, you and Blau, and write something that shall be _bien pour moi_." "Lorenzaccio," perhaps the strongest of De Musset's dramatic efforts, first came up. But Faure was not at all in touch with it. The role of Brutus--fawning Judas that he is--revolted him. He had no fancy to distort as _menteur a triple etage_; so the subject was put by. Then came Bizet one morning with an old issue of _Le Journal pour tous_ in his pocket. "Here is the very thing for us: 'Le Jeunesse du Cid' of Guilhem de Castro; not, mark you, the Cid of Corneille alone, but the inceptive Cid in all the glory of its pristine colour--the Cid, Don Rodrigue de Bivar, in the words of Sainte-Beuve 'the immortal flower of honour and of love.'" _The scene du mendiant_ held Bizet completely. It was to him simple, touching, and great. It showed Don Rodrigue in a new light. Those--and there were many of them--who had already cast their choice upon this legend, had recognised--but recognised merely--in their hero, the son prepared to sacrifice his love for filial duty, and to yield his life for love.

But they had not seen in him the Christian, the true and G.o.dly soul, the Good Samaritan that De Castro represents. The scene of Rodrigue with the leper, disdained and done away with by Corneille, with which De Castro too was so reproached, was full of attraction for Bizet. His whole interest centred round it. He was impatient and hungered to get at it; and "Carmen," on which he was already well at work, was even laid aside the while. Faure, too, had expressed a sound approval and a hearty interest, and this alone meant much. So Bizet once again was full of hope. There follows a long and detailed correspondence on the subject with Gallet, with which I have not s.p.a.ce to deal; but it shows up splendidly the extreme nicety of the musician's dramatic sense.

In the summer of 1873 "Don Rodrigue" was really finished, and one evening Bizet called his friends to come and listen. Around the piano were Edouard Blau, Louis Gallet, and Jean Faure. Bizet had his score before him--to common gaze a skeleton thing enough, for of "accompaniment" there was but little. But to its creator it was well alive, and he sang--in the poorest possible voice, it is true--the whole thing through from beginning to end. Chorus, soprano, tenor, ba.s.s, yea, even the choicer "bits" for orchestra--all came alike to him; all were infused with life from the spirit that created them. It was long past midnight when he ceased, and then they sat and talked till dawn. All were enthusiastic, and in the opinion of Faure (given three years later) this score was more than the equal of "Carmen." His word is all we have for it, but it carries with it something of conviction. He was no bad judge of a work. Anyway, no sooner had he heard it than he set about securing its speedy production at the Opera. And he succeeded in so far that it was put down early on the list. But Fate had yet to be reckoned with. She was not thus to be baulked of her prey: she had dogged the footsteps of poor Bizet far too zealously for that; and on the 28th October (less than a week after he had put _finis_ to his work), she stepped in. On that day the Opera was burned down.

As for the score, it was laid aside, and of its ultimate lot we are in ignorance. Inquiry on the part of Gallet seems to have elicited nothing more definite than a courteous letter from M. Ludovic Halevy, to the effect that he was quite free to dispose of the book to another composer. "It was George's favourite," wrote his brother-in-law, "and he had great hopes for it; but it was not to be."

Perhaps of all his powers Bizet's greatest was that of recuperation.

It would be wrong to say he did not know defeat; he knew it all too well, but he never let it get the better of him. He was never without his irons upon the fire, never without a project to fall back upon.

And perhaps it is not too much to say that he had no life outside his art. This too may in truth be told of him: that in all the struggle and the scramble, in all his fight with fortune, it was the sweeter qualities of his nature that came uppermost. His strength of purpose stood on a sound basis--a basis of confidence in, though not arrogance of, his own power. Where he was most handicapped was in carrying on his artistic progress _coram populo_. Had it been as gradual as most men's--had it been but the acquiring of an ordinary experience--all might have been well; he would probably have been accorded his niche and would have occupied it. But he progressed by leaps and bounds, and even then his ideal kept steadily miles ahead of his achievement. It was for long a very will-o'-the-wisp for him. Now and again he caught it, and it is at such moments that we have him at his best; but he can be said only to have captured it completely--so far as we are in a position to tell--in "L'Arlesienne" and certain parts of "Carmen." His faculty of self-criticism was developed in such an extraordinary degree as to baulk him. He loved this Don Rodrigue and thought it was his masterwork, and that too at the time when "Carmen" must have been well forward. We know then that the loss is not a small one.

It had not been alone the fate of the Opera House that had stood in the way. That inst.i.tution had in course taken up its quarters at the Salle Ventadour, and once installed there had proceeded with the _repertoire_. But Bizet's "Rodrigue," although well backed by Faure, was pushed aside for others. The three names that it bore were all too impotent; and when a new work was announced, it was "L'Esclave" of Membree that was seen to grace the bills, and not "Don Rodrigue."

Poor Bizet, disappointed and sore at heart, vanished to hide himself once more by his beloved Seine. This time it was to Bougival he went.

M. Ma.s.senet had recently produced his "Marie Madeleine" and, curiously enough, it had been successful. This seems to have spurred Bizet on to emulation. With his usual happy knack of hitting on a subject, he wrote off to Gallet, requesting him to do a book with Genevieve de Paris--the holy Genevieve of legendary lore--for heroine. And Gallet, accommodating creature that he was, forthwith proceeded to construct his tableaux. Together they went off to Lamoureux and read the synopsis to him. He approved it heartily, and Bizet got to work.

"Carmen" was then finished and was undergoing the usual stage of adjournment _sine die_. Three times it had been put into rehearsal, only to be withdrawn for apparently no reason, and poor Bizet was wearying of opera and its ways. This sacred work was relief to him.

But hardly had he settled down to it when up came "Carmen" once again, this time in good earnest. He was forced to leave "Genevieve" and come to Paris for rehearsals. It was much against his inclination that he did so, for his health was failing fast. For long he had suffered from an abscess which had made his life a burden to him. Nor had his terrible industry been without its effect upon his physique. He did not know it, but he had sacrificed to his work the very things he had worked for. He felt exhausted, enfeebled, shattered. Probably the excitement of rehearsing "Carmen" kept him up the while; but it had its after-effect, and the strain proved all the more disastrous. A profound melancholy, too, had come over him; and do what he would he could not beat it off. A young singer (some aspirant for lyric fame) came one day to sing to him. "Ich grolle nicht" and "Aus der Heimath"

were chosen. "Quel chef d'oeuvre," said he, "mais quelle desolation, c'est a vous donner la nostalgie de la mort." Then he sat down to the piano and played the "Marche Funebre" of Chopin. That was the frame of mind he was in.

In his gayer moments he would often long for Italy. He had never forgotten the happy days pa.s.sed there with Guiraud. "I dreamed last night" (he is writing to Guiraud) "that we were all at Naples, installed in a most lovely villa, and living under a government purely artistic. The Senate was made up by Beethoven, Michael Angelo, Shakespeare, Giorgione, _e tutti quanti_. The National Guard was no more. In place of it there was a huge orchestra of which Litolff was the conductor. All suffrage was denied to idiots, humbugs, schemers, and ignoramuses--that is to say, suffrage was cut down to the smallest proportions imaginable. Genevieve was a little too amiable for Goethe, but despite this trifling circ.u.mstance the awakening was terribly bitter."

"Carmen" was produced at last, on the 3rd of March in that year (1875). The Habanera--of which, by the way, he wrote for Mme.

Galli-Marie no less than thirteen versions before he came across, in an old book, the one we know--the prelude to the second act, the toreador song, and the quintett were encored. The rest fell absolutely flat.

The blow was a terrific one to Bizet. He had dreamed of such a different lot for "Carmen." Arm in arm with Guiraud he left the theatre, and together they paced the streets of Paris until dawn.

Small wonder he felt bitter; and in vain the kindly Guiraud did his best to comfort him. Had not "Don Juan," he argued, been accorded a reception no whit better when it was produced in Vienna? and had not poor Mozart said "I have written 'Don Juan' for myself and two of my friends"? But he found no consolation in the fact. The press, too, cut him to the quick. This "Carmen," said they, was immoral, _ba.n.a.le_; it was all head and no heart; the composer had made up his mind to show how learned he was, with the result that he was only dull and obscure.

Then again, the gipsy girl whose liaisons formed the subject of the story was at best an odious creature; the actress's gestures were the very incarnation of vice, there was something licentious even in the tones of her voice; the composer evidently belonged to the school of _civet sans lievre_; there was no unity of style; it was not dramatic, and could never live; in a word, there was no health in it.

Even Du Locle--who of all men should have supported it--played him false. A minister of the Government wrote personally to the director for a box for his family. Du Locle replied with an invitation to the rehearsal, adding that he had rather that the minister came himself before he brought his daughters.

Prostrate with it all, poor Bizet returned to Bougival. When forced to give up "Genevieve," he had written to Gallet: "I shall give the whole of May, June, and July to it." And now May was already come, and he was in his bed. "Angine colossale," were the words he sent to Guiraud, who was to have been with him the following Sunday. "Do not come as we arranged; imagine, if you can, a double pedal, A flat, E flat, straight through your head from left to right. This is how I am just now."

He never wrote more than a few pages of "Genevieve." He got worse and worse. But even so, the end came all too suddenly, and on the night of the 2nd of June he died--died as nearly as possible at the exact moment when Galli-Marie at the Opera Comique was singing her song of fate in the card scene of the third act of his "Carmen." The coincidence was true enough. That night it was with difficulty that she sung her song. Her nervousness, from some cause or another, was so great that it was with the utmost effort she p.r.o.nounced the words: "La carte impitoyable; repetera la mort; encore, toujours la mort." On finis.h.i.+ng the scene, she fainted at the wings. Next morning came the news of Bizet's death. And some friends said--because it was not meet for them to see the body--that the poor fellow had killed himself.

Small wonder if it were so!

Six Drawings

By Aubrey Beardsley

I. II. III. The Comedy-Ballet of Marionnettes, as performed by the troupe of the Theatre-Impossible, posed in three drawings

IV. Garcons de Cafe

V. The Slippers of Cinderella

_For you must have all heard of the Princess Cinderella with her slim feet and s.h.i.+ning slippers. She was beloved by Prince ----, who married her, but she died soon afterwards, poisoned (according to Dr. Gerschovius) by her elder sister Arabella, with powdered gla.s.s. It was ground I suspect from those very slippers she danced in at the famous ball. For the slippers of Cinderella have never been found since. They are not at Cluny._ _HECTOR SANDUS_

VI. Portrait of Madame Rejane

[Ill.u.s.tration: First Comedy-Ballet]

[Ill.u.s.tration: Second Comedy Ballet]

[Ill.u.s.tration: Third Comedy Ballet]

[Ill.u.s.tration: Garcons de Cafe]

[Ill.u.s.tration: The Slippers of Cinderella]

[Ill.u.s.tration: Portrait of Madame Rejane]