My Memoirs Part 5

Bonnat was kind to all, especially to poor artists. I once spoke to him about a young and unsuccessful painter who believed in his genius and, what is worse, had made another share his delusions; a poor little girl to whom he gave his unknown name and who gave him her love and--several children. I did my utmost to relieve their misery, and then wrote and asked Bonnat to examine the young man's work.

I went to the studio in the Rue Ba.s.sano shortly afterwards.

"Well, what is it like?" I asked.

"Nothing in it so far," Bonnat replied. "Why on earth does the fellow paint? The only way of saving him is to make him give up Art and adopt some other profession. Will you send him to me one of these days?"

"He's downstairs, waiting...." And I ran away before my old friend could exclaim his usual "Just like you!"

Bonnat questioned the young painter about his parents and heard that they were farmers. In his entertaining way he spoke of Nature, country-life, the simple life.... "And do you really think," he exclaimed in conclusion, "that if it were not for the Inst.i.tute, the Council of the Legion d'Honneur, the Ecole des Beaux Arts, of which I am the director, and a score of other Societies and Committees to which I belong, I would remain here one single hour longer. No, sir! And you should consider yourself as a lucky dog. If I were free, as you are, I would go and live in my dear Saint-Jean-de-Luz, near the sea and near the Pyrenees, and breathe, and work.... As for painting, it is a wonderful thing, fascinating, ideal, sublime and all that, and I am rather fond of it myself, but there's no living in it unless you made a name for yourself forty years ago, as I did, for people liked good and beautiful things in those days, and paid for them.... If I were you, I'd paint what I pleased--in my leisure, and adopt some simple profession to earn my living. Ask your father to let you help him on his farm, and if you send me a picture every year and it's good enough, I'll try to get it accepted at the Salon.... By the way, do you care for a good cigar?"

"Rather," said the young painter, who although born in the country had spent several years in Montmartre.

"Well, then, my lad, take this box with you." And Bonnat dismissed him in the blunt manner which he a.s.sumed whenever he did a good action.

I saw the young man a few days later, before his departure for the country, where he was to become a prosperous farmer, though he never gave up painting, and he told me, with big tears in his eyes, that he had found in the box, besides the cigars, ten hundred-franc notes, and Bonnat's card with these words, "Good Luck."

"How shall I thank M. Bonnat," he kept repeating, after I had filled him with tea and cakes so that he might recover.

"I'll tell you," I replied. "By, not thanking him at all. He loathes grat.i.tude."

Ma.s.senet, the composer of _Manon_, _Thas_, _Sapho_, _Werther_, and so many other delightful operas, did me, for many years, the great honour of calling himself my "respectful, obedient, and faithful accompanist."

I always found him whimsical, enthusiastic, mischievous, and fond of jokes. As he entered my salon, at some crowded reception, he would wave aside the valet about to announce his name, and shout in a stentorian voice: "Ma.s.senet!"... Once, he added, "Grand officer of the legion of honour, author of a score of operas, member of several academies!" And as soon as he had greeted me and shaken hands with a few friends, he started his favourite sport: pun-making. He had a knack of ending the most serious arguments, even about music, with a _bon mot_, and I sincerely believe that he enjoyed the successes of his witticisms quite as much as the success of his operas. He said himself: "I am a composer, that's true and I can't help it, but at the same time I love fun and youth, and boys of sixty are incorrigible."

Once, some foreigners called on me, and Ma.s.senet begged me to mumble his name when I should introduce him. A little later, he was talking music to the newcomers, and in time mentioned Ma.s.senet, whose music he lightly disparaged, with the result that they agreed with him, as he seemed to know all about music, and even went further and declared Ma.s.senet's music quite unbearable. Thereupon the composer sat at the piano and played some of his own music as he alone could play it, and Ma.s.senet's critics went into ecstasies. "Ah, that's what one may call real music,"

they said. "Who wrote it?"

"A friend of mine," Ma.s.senet replied airily, and he played again, saying when he had concluded, "That was my own."

"It's perfectly sweet. You ought to have your music printed."

"I occasionally do."

"Really! Would you mind repeating your name, we didn't quite catch it!"

"Ma.s.senet," and with infinite good grace the composer handed his card, and left the room in order to have his laugh outside.

His letters were most amusing. They were interspersed with bars of music and "sketches" to emphasise or ill.u.s.trate his meaning. And they invariably contained some welcome remark about his work: "I have just left the Opera Comique. I am quite done up, but the interpretation at this rehearsal was splendid; singers, orchestra, everything. And Calve!

She's divine.... Ah! The fourth act, you will see what she makes of it!..." But long before his letters reached me, Ma.s.senet came himself, although "done up," and played to me that fourth act, and made me sing it... under the eyes of my mother and of Marthe, wrapped in ecstasy!

Ma.s.senet wors.h.i.+pped my daughter and always perched the darling on the top of the piano, where he played.

In order that Marthe might accompany me, he had the charming idea of composing a few songs for me, the accompaniments of which were very simple and easy and without octaves, which were as yet beyond her reach.

On the day when she played the first of these "Do not give thy heart,"

Ma.s.senet indulged in an orgy of puns and jokes, which was a sign of perfect contentment.

Francois Coppee, an old comrade of my husband's and one of my "faithful," as he called himself, lived close to us and often came in to have a chat, to look at the flowers in my "winter garden" or to listen to music.

One day, when Reyer, the composer of _Sigurd_ was present, he remarked that music was not only the most sociological and popular of arts, it was also the easiest. "I could not play a chord, but I feel sure that it is easier to express one's self in music than in written words...."

Reyer decreed: "It is quite as difficult to frame a melody as to frame a sonnet." But Coppee refused to believe it, and going to the piano, he struck a note mightily. "That's a war-cry," he exclaimed; then touched the same note gently, "And that's melancholy," and playing it once more as softly as possible, "And that's reverie: Music is above all wonderful because it is so simple!" It was a mere sally on his part, and Reyer laughed heartily.

Coppee was kind, tender-hearted, and sociable, the very type of the popular and sentimental _Parna.s.sien_. He spoke in an artless manner, as much like a Christian as a poet, and the modesty of this _Academicien_, this "immortal" loaded with honours, was delightful.

He found me one evening reading some verses of Heredia. "You are unfaithful to me, dear friend," he said.

"I like all good poets," I replied, "and this one opens wide horizons to me. He seems very far...."

"You are right. I merely try to see what is near me," said Coppee with a smile.

Little Marthe was very proud of the poet, but this did not prevent her from making use of him. She made him gather sh.e.l.ls for her, one summer, on a small beach in Normandy, and told him to store them in his large felt hat. It was there that he once took us to a huge rock in a secret hole of which he showed me a large box of cigarettes.

"The doctor strictly forbids me to smoke," he explained, "and my sister (Coppee was a bachelor and lived with his sister, who was the most devoted person one could well conceive) sees to it that the doctor's instructions are carried out. Therefore, I come here secretly to smoke.

Life without tobacco, you know...." Then taking me to the other side of the rock, he pointed to the sand which was strewn with hundreds of cigarette ends, and cheerfully exclaimed: "What a cemetery!"

Marthe, who was then seven years old, had often heard that Coppee was a great man, and that all which came from a great man was worth keeping.

While we walked on, Coppee and I, she gathered all the cigarette ends, hid them, and the next day, put them in a box which she would not let out of her hands. Coppee, later on questioned her about the precious contents of the box.... He believed, as I did, that it contained sea-sh.e.l.ls, and he was very much tickled when she opened the box, and in her little fluty voice, declared: "I too want to have a keepsake from you, and I have it!"

In Paris I often saw Coppee as I pa.s.sed by the Cafe des Vosges, his favourite haunt, a few hundred yards away from the Impa.s.se Ronsin. He saluted me, quickly paid the waiter, overtook me, and together we walked to my house, talking of books.

He himself organised a performance at my villa of his _Pa.s.sant_, the charming one-act play which had made him famous when he was twenty-seven, and still a clerk in the Ministry of War.

During the Dreyfus affair, in which he took a leading part as one of the founders of the Patrie Francaise League, I saw him less and less.

Meeting him one morning in the gardens of the Luxembourg, I asked him why he neglected me.

"Ah! my friend," he said hesitatingly, "I'd love to call on you as in the past, but the trouble is there are too many Dreyfusards in your salon!"

By an amusing coincidence, Zola called that very day, but he only remained a little while.

"To my great regret, I must go, Madame." And he added in a low, confidential voice: "The fact is there are too many Anti-Dreyfusards here."

The author of the Roujon-Macquarts was manly and brave besides being an able if unsympathetic novelist, but he had, to my knowledge, one little failing: he disliked talent in others, and one weakness: he was a gourmet. Therefore on the two or three occasions when he dined with us, I arranged a menu which Brillat Savarin would have endorsed and took care not to invite any other writer.

Zola lacked in conversation what he lacked in his writing: delicacy, refinement, lightness. He was heavy, ponderous and rather aggressive.

I teased him one day: "How is the chase after human doc.u.ments going on?"

I asked.

"Quite well, Madame. I hunt my quarry everywhere, and all day long.

Human doc.u.ments, slices of life, searching character-studies, that is all there is in literature."

"But what of the writer's personality? Is that of no account whatever?"