Love Among the Artists/Book I/Chapter IX
The year after that in which Madge had her autumnal glimpse of the London stage began with a General Election, followed by a change in the Ministry, a revival of trade, a general fancy that things were going to mend, and a sudden access of spirit in political agitation, commercial enterprise, public amusements, and private expenditure. The wave even reached a venerable artistic institution called the Antient Orpheus Society, established nearly a century ago for the performance of orchestral music, and since regarded as the pioneer of musical art in England. It had begun by producing Beethoven's symphonies: it had ended by producing a typical collection of old fogeys, who pioneered backwards so fast and so far that they had not finished shaking their heads over the innovations in the overture to William Tell when the rest of the world were growing tired of the overture to Tannhauser. The younger critics had introduced a fashion of treating the Antient Orpheus as obsolescent; and even their elders began to forebode the extinction of the Society unless it were speedily rejuvenated by the supercession of the majority of the committee. But the warnings of the press, as usual, did not come until long after the public had begun to abstain from the Antient Orpheus concerts; and as the Society in its turn resisted the suggestions of the press until death or dotage reduced the conservative majority of the committee to a minority, the credit of the Antient Orpheus was almost past recovery when reform was at last decided on. When the new members of the rejuvenated committee—three of whom were under fifty—realized this, they became as eager to fill the concert programmes with new works as their predecessors had been determined to exclude them. But when the business of selecting the new works came to be considered, all was discord. Some urged the advisability of performing the works of English composers, a wilful neglect of which had been one of the of the practices of the old committee of which the press had most persistently complained. To this it was objected that in spite of the patriotic complaints of critics, the public had shewed their opinion of English composers by specially avoiding the few concerts to which they had been allowed to contribute. At last it was arranged that an English work should be given at the first concert of the season, and that care should be taken to neutralize its repellent effect on the public by engaging a young Polish lady, who had recently made an extraordinary success abroad as a pianist, to make her first appearance in England on the occasion. Matters being settled so far, question now arose as to what the new English work should be. Most of the Committee had manuscript scores of their own, composed posed thirty years before in the interval between leaving the academy and getting enough teaching to use up all their energy; but as works of this class had already been heard once or twice by the public with undisguised tedium, and as each composer hesitated to propose his own opus, the question was not immediately answered. Then a recently-elected member of the Committee, not a professional musician, mentioned a fantasia for pianoforte and orchestra of which he had some private knowledge. It was composed, he said, by a young man, a Mr Owen Jack. The chairman coughed, and remarked coldly that he did not recollect the name. A member asked bluntly who Mr Jack was, and whether anybody had ever heard of him. Another member protested against the suggestion of a fantasia, and declared that if this illustrious obscure did not know enough about musical form to write a concerto, the Antient Orpheus Society, which had subsisted for nearly a century without his assistance, could probably do so a little longer. When the laughter and applause which this speech evoked had subsided, a good natured member remarked that he had met a man of the name of Jack at somebody's place in Windsor, and had heard him improvise variations on a song of the hostess's in a rather striking manner. He therefore seconded the proposal that Jack's fantasia should be immediately examined with a view to its performance by the Polish lady at the next concert. Another member, not good natured, but professionally jealous of the last speaker but one, supported the proposal on the ground that the notion that the Society could get on high-and-mightily without ever doing anything new was just what had brought it to death's door. This naturally elicited a defiant statement that the Society had never been more highly esteemed than at that hour; and a debate ensued, in the course of which Jack's ability was hotly attacked and defended in turn by persons who had never heard of him before that day. Eventually the member who had introduced the subject obtained permission to invite Mr Jack to submit his fantasia to the Committee.
At the next meeting an indignant member begged leave to call the attention of his colleagues to a document which had accompanied the score forwarded in response to the invitation by which the Antient Orpheus Society had honored Mr Owen Jack. It was a letter to the Secretary, in the following terms:
"Sir—Herewith you will find the instrumental partition of a fantasia composed by me for pianoforte and orchestra. I am willing to give the use of it to the Antient Orpheus Society gratuitously for one concert, on condition that the rehearsal be superintended by me, and that, if I require it, a second rehearsal be held."
The member said he would not dwell on the propriety of this communication to the foremost musical society in Europe from a minor teacher, as he had ascertained Mr. Jack to be. It had been sufficiently rebuked by the Secretary's reply, dispatched alter the partition had been duly examined, to the effect that the work, though not destitute of merit, was too eccentric in form, and crude in harmonic structure, to be suitable for public performance at the concerts of the Society. This had elicited a second letter from Mr. Jack, of which the member would say nothing, as he preferred to leave it to speak for itself and for the character of the writer.
Church Street,
Kensington, W.Sir—Your criticism was uninvited, and is valueless except as an illustration of the invincible ignorance of the pedants whose mouthpiece you are. I am, sir,
Yours truly,
Owen Jack."
The most astute diplomatist could not have written a more effective letter in Jack's favor than this proved. The party of reform took it as an exquisite slap at their opponents, and at once determined to make the Secretary smart for rejecting the work without the authority of the whole Committee. Jack's advocate produced a note from the Polish lady acknowledging the receipt of a pianoforte fantasia, and declaring that she should be enchanted to play for the first time to an English audience a work so poetic by one of their own nation. He explained that having borrowed a copy of the pianoforte part from a young lady relative of his who was studying it, he had sent it to the Polish artist, who had just arrived in England. Her opinion of it, he contended, was sufficient to show that the letter of the secretary was the result of an error of judgment which deserved no better answer than it had elicited. The secretary retorted that he had no right to avail himself of his private acquaintance with the pianist to influence the course of the Society, and stigmatized Jack's letter as the coarse abuse natural to the vulgar mind of a self-assertive charlatan. On the other hand, it was maintained that Jack had only shewn the sensitiveness of an artist, and that to invite a composer to send in a work and then treat it as if it were an examination paper filled by a presumptuous novice, was an impertinence likely to bring ridicule as well as odium upon the Antient Orpheus. The senior member, who occupied the chair, now declared very solemnly that he had seen the fantasia, and that it was one of those lawless compositions unhappily common of late years, which were hurrying the beautiful art of Haydn and Mozart into the abyss of modern sensationalism. Hereupon someone remarked that the gentleman had frequently spoken of the works of Wagner in the same terms, although they all knew that Richard Wagner was the greatest composer of that or any other age. This assertion was vehemently repudiated by some, and loudly cheered by others In the hubbub which followed, Jack's cause became identified with that of Wagner; and a motion to set aside the unauthorized rejection of the fantasia was carried by a majority of the admirers of the Prussian composer, not one of whom knew or cared a straw about the English one.
"I am glad we have won the day," said Mr. Phipson, the proposer of this motion, to a friend, as the meeting broke up; "but we have certainly experienced the truth of Mary's remark that this Jack creates nothing but discord in real life, whatever he may do in music."
Jack at first refused to have anything further to do with the Antient Orpheus; but as it was evident that his refusal would harm nobody except himself, he yielded to the entreaties of Mary Sutherland, and consented to make use of the opportunity she had, through Mr. Phipson, procured for him. As the negotiation proceeded; and at last, one comfortless wet spring morning, Jack got out of an omnibus in Piccadilly, and walked through the mud to St. James's Hall, where, in the gloomy rooms beneath the orchestra, he found a crowd of about eighty men, chatting, hugging themselves, and stamping because of the cold, stooping over black bags and boxes containing musical instruments, or reluctantly unwinding woolen mufflers and unbuttoning great coats. He passed them into a lower room, where he found three gentlemen standing in courtly attitudes before a young lady wrapped in furs, with a small head, light brown hair, and a pale face, rather toil worn. She received them with that natural air of a princess in her own right which is so ineffectually striven for by the ordinary princess in other people's rights. As she spoke to the gentlemen in French, occasionally helping them to understand her by a few words of broken English, she smiled occasionally, apparently more from kindness than natural gaiety, for her features always relapsed into an expression of patient but not unhappy endurance. Near her sat an old foreign lady, brown skinned, tall, and very grim.
Jack advanced a few steps into the room; glanced at the gentlemen, and took a long look at the younger lady, who, like the rest, had had her attention arrested by his impressive ugliness. He scrutinized her so openly that she turned away displeased, and a little embarrassed. Two of the gentlemen stared at him stiffly. The third came forward, and said with polite severity, "What is your business here, sir?"
Jack looked at him for a moment, wrinkling his face hideously. "I am Jack," he said, in the brassiest tone of his powerful voice. "Who are you?"
"Oh!" said the gentleman, relaxing a little. "I beg your pardon. I had not the pleasure of knowing you by sight, Mr Jack. My name is Manlius, at your service." Mr Manlius was the conductor of the Antient Orpheus orchestra. He was a learned musician, generally respected because he had given instruction to members of the Royal family, and, when conducting, never allowed his orchestra to forget the restraint due to the presence of ladies and gentlemen in the sofa stalls.
Jack bowed. Mr Manlius considered whether he should introduce the composer to the young lady. Whilst he hesitated, a trampling overhead was succeeded by the sounding of a note first on the pianoforte and then on the oboe, instantly followed by the din of an indescribable discord of fifths from innumerable strings, varied by irrelevant chromatic scales from the wood wind, and a doleful timing of slides from the brass. Jack's eyes gleamed. Troubling himself no further about Mr Manlius, he went out through a door leading to the stalls, where he found a knot of old gentlemen disputing. One of them immediately whispered something to the others; and they continued their discussion a in a lower tone. Jack looked at the orchestra for a few minutes, and then returned to the room he had left, where the elder lady was insisting in French that the pianoforte fantasia should be rehearsed before anything else, as she was not going to wait in the cold all day. Mr Manlius assured her that he had anticipated her suggestion, and should act upon it as a matter of course.
"It is oll the* same thinks," said the young lady in English. Then in French. "Even if you begin with the fantasia, Monsieur, I shall assuredly wait to hear for the first time your famous band perform in this ancient hall."
Manlius bowed. When he straightened himself again, he found Jack standing at his elbow. "Allow me to present to you Monsieur Jack," he said.
"It is for Monsieur Jacques to allow," she replied. The poor artist is honored by the presence of the illustrious English composer."
Jack nodded gravely as acknowledging that the young woman expressed herself becomingly. Manlius grinned covertly, and proposed that they should go up on the orchestra, as the band was apt to get out of humor when too much time was wasted. She rose at once, and ascended the steps on the arm of the conductor. She was received with an encouraging clapping of hands and tapping of fiddle backs. Jack followed with the elder lady, who sat down on the top stair, and began to knit.
"If you wish to conduct the rehearsal," said Manlius politely to Jack, "you are, of course, quite welcome to do so."
"Thank you," said Jack. "I will." Manlius, who had hardly expected him to accept the offer, retired to the pianoforte, and prepared to turn over the leaves for the player.
"I think I can play it from memory," she said to him, "unless Monsieur Jacques puts it all out of my head. Judging by his face, it is certain that he is not very patien— Ah ! Did I not say so?"
Jack had rapped the desk sharply with his stick, and was looking balefully at the men, who did not seem in any hurry to attend to him. He put down the stick, stepped from the desk, and stooped to the conductor's ear.
I mentioned," he said, "that some of the parts ought to be given to the men to study before rehearsal. Has that been done?"
Manlius smiled. "My dear sir," he said, "I need hardly tell you that players of such standing as the members of the Antient Orpheus orchestra do not care to have suggestions of that kind offered to them. You have no cause to be uneasy. They can play anything—absolutely anything, at sight."
Jack looked black, and returned to his desk without a word. He gave one more rap with his stick, and began. The players were attentive, but many of them tried not to look so.
For a few bars, Jack conducted under some restraint, apparently striving to repress a tendency to extravagant gesticulation. Then, as certain combinations and progressions sounded strange and far-fetched, slight bursts Of laughter were heard. Suddenly the first clarinetist, with an exclamation of impatience, put down his instrument.
"Well?" shouted Jack. The music ceased.
"I can't play that." said the clarinetist shortly.
"Can you play it?" said Jack, with suppressed rage, to the second clarinetist.
"No," said he. "Nobody could play it."
"That passage has been played; and it must be played. It has been played by a common soldier."
"If a common soldier even attempted it, much less played it," said the first clarinetist, with some contemptuous indignation at what he considered an evident falsehood, "he must have been drunk." There was general titter at this.
Jack visibly wrestled with himself for a moment. Then, with a gleam of humor like a flash of sunshine through a black thundercloud, he said: "You are right. He was drunk." The whole band roared with laughter.
"Well, I am not drunk," said the clarinetist, folding his arms.
"But will you not just try wh—" Here Jack, choked by the effort to be persuasive and polite, burst out raging: "It can be done. It shall be done. It must be done. You are the best clarinet player in England. I know what you can do." And Jack shook his fists wildly at the man as if he were accusing him of some infamous crime. But the compliment was loudly applauded, and the man reddened, not altogether displeased. A cornist who sat near him said soothingly in an Irish accent, "Aye, do, Joe. Try it."
"You will: you can," shouted Jack reassuringly, recovering his self-command. "Back to the double bar. Now!" The music recommenced; and the clarinetist, overborne, took up his instrument, and, when the passage was reached, played it easily, greatly to his own astonishment. The brilliancy of the effect, too, raised him for a time into a prominence which rivaled that of the pianist. The orchestra positively interrupted the movement to applaud it; and Jack joined in with high good humor.
"If you are uneasy about it," said he, with an undisguised chuckle, "I can hand it over to the violins."
"Oh, no, thank you," said the clarinetist. "Now I've got it, I'll keep it."
Jack rubbed his nose until it glowed like a coal, and the movement proceeded without another stoppage, the men now seeing that Jack was in his right place. But when a theme marked andante cantabile, which formed the middle section of the fantasia, was commenced by the pianist, Jack turned to her, said quicker. Plus vite;" and began to mark his beat by striking the desk. She looked at him anxiously; played a few bars in the time indicated by him; and then threw up her hands and stopped.
"I cannot," she exclaimed. "I must play it more slowly or not at all."
"Certainly, it shall be slower if you desire it," said
the elder lady from the steps. Jack looked at her as
he sometimes looked at Mrs Simpson. "Certainly it
shall not be slower, if all the angels desired it," he
said, in well pronounced but barbarously ungrammatical
French. Go on and take the time from my beat.
The Polish lady shook her head; folded her hands in her lap; and looked patiently at the music before her. There was a moment of silence, during which Jack, thus mutely defied, glared at her with distorted features. Manilius rose irresolutely. Jack stepped down from the desk; handed him the stick; and said in a smothered voice, "Be good enough to conduct this lady's portion of the fantasia. When my music recommences, I will return."
Manlius took the stick and mounted the desk, the orchestra receiving him with applause. In the midst of it Jack went out, giving the pianist a terrible look as he passed her, and transferring it to her companion, who raised her eyebrows and shoulders contemptuously.
Manlius was not the man to impose his own ideas of a composition on a refractory artist; and though he was privately disposed to agree with Jack that the Polish lady was misjudging the speed of the movement, he obediently followed her playing with his beat. But he soon lost his first impression, and began to be affected by a dread lest anyone should make a noise in the room. He moved his stick as quietly as possible, and raised his left hand as if to still the band, who were, however, either watching the pianist intently or playing without a trace of the expert offhandedness which they had affected at first. The pleasure of listening made Manlius forget to follow the score. When he roused himself and found his place, he perceived that the first horn player was altering a passage completely, though very happily. Looking questioningly in that direction, he saw Jack sitting beside the man with a pencil in his hand. Manlius observed for the first time that he had an expressive face and remarkable eyes, and was not, as he had previously seemed, unmitigatedly ugly. Meanwhile the knot of old gentlemen in the stalls, who had previously chattered subduedly, became quite silent; and a few of them closed their eyes rapturously. The lady on the steps alone did not seem to care about the music. At last the flow of melody waned and broke into snatches. The pianoforte seemed to appeal to the instruments to continue the song. A melancholy strain from the violas responded hopelessly; but the effect of this was marred by a stir in the orchestra. The trombone and trumpet players, hitherto silent, were taking up their instruments and pushing up their moustaches. The drummer, after some hasty screwing round his third drum, poised his sticks; and a supernumerary near him rose, cymbals in hand; fixed his eye on Manlius, and apparently stood ready to clap the head of the trumpet player in front of him as a lady claps a moth flying from a woolen curtain. Manlius looked at the score as if he did not quite understand the sequel. Suddenly, as the violas ceased,Jack shouted in a startling voice, "Let it be an avalanche from the top to the bottom of the Himalayas;" and rushed to the conductor's desk. Manlius made way for him precipitately; and a tremendous sound followed. "Louder," roared Jack. Less noise and more tone. Out with it like fifty million devils." As he led the movement at a merciless speed. The pianist looked bewildered, like the band, most of whom lost their places after the first fifty bars; but when the turn of a player came, he found the conductor glaring at him, and was swept into his part without clearly knowing how. It was an insensate orgies of sound. Gay melodies, daintily given out by the pianoforte, or by the string instruments, were derisively brayed out immediately afterwards by cornets, harmonized in thirds with the most ingenious vulgarity. Cadenzas, agilely executed by the Poish lady, were uncouthly imitated by the double basses. Themes constructed like ballads with choruses were introduced instead of orthodox "subjects." The old gentlemen in the stalls groaned and protested. The Polish lady, incommoded by the capricious and often excessive speed required of her, held on gallantly, Jack all the time grinding his teeth, dancing, gesticulating, and by turns shshsh-shing at the orchestra, or shouting to them for more tone and less noise. Even the lady on the steps had begun to nod to the impetuous rhythm, when the movement ended as suddenly as it had begun; and all the players rose to their feet, laughing and applauding heartily. Manlius, from whose mind the fantasia had banished all prejudice as to Jack's rank as a musician, shook his hand warmly. The Polish lady, her face transfigured by musical excitement, offered her hand too. Jack took it and held it, saying abruptly, "Listen to me. You were quite right; and I am a fool. I did not know what there was in my own music, and would have spoiled it if you had not prevented me. You are a great player, because you get the most beautiful tone possible from every note you touch, and you make every phrase say all that it was meant to say, and more. You are an angel. I would rather hear you play scales than hear myself play sonatas. And —" here he lowered his voice and drew her aside—"I rely on you to make my work succeed at the concert. Manlius will conduct the band; but you must conduct Manlius. It is not enough to be a gentleman and a contrapuntist in order to conduct. You comprehend?"
"Yes, Monsieur; I understand perfectly, perfectly. I will do my best. I shall be inspired. How magnificent it is!"
"Allow me to congratulate you, sir," said one of the old gentlemen, advancing. "Myself and colleagues have been greatly struck by your work. I am empowered to say on their behalf that whatever difference of opinion there may be among us as to the discretion with which you have employed your powers, of the extraordinary nature of those powers there can no longer be a doubt; and we are thoroughly gratified at having chosen for performance a work which displays so much originality and talent as your fantasia."
"Ten years ago" said Jack, looking steadily at him, "I might have been glad to hear you say so. At present the time for compliments is past, unless you wish to congratulate me on the private interest that has gained my work a hearing. My talent and originality have been a my chief allies here."
"Are you not a little hasty?" said the gentleman, disconcerted, "Success comes late in London; and you are still, if I may say so, a comparatively young man."
"I am not old enough to harp on being comparatively young. I am thirty-four years old; and if I had adopted any other profession than that of composer of music, I should have been seeing a respectable livelihood by this time. As it is, I have never made a farthing by my compositions. I don't blame those who have Stood between me and the public: their ignorance is their misfortune, and not their fault. But now that I have come to light by a chance in spite of their teeth, I am not in the humor to exchange pretty speeches with them. Understand, sir: I do not mean to rebuff you personally. But as for your colleagues, tell them that it does not become them to pretend to pretend to acknowledge spontaneously what I have just, after many hard years, forced them to admit. Look at those friends of yours shaking their heads over my score there. They have heard my music, but they do not know what to say until they see it. Would you like me to believe that they are admiring it?"
"I am confident that they cannot help doing so."
"They are shewing one another why it ought not to have been written—hunting out my consecutive fifths and sevenths, and my false relations— looking for my first subject, my second subject, my working out, and the rest of the childishness that could be taught to a poodle. Don't they wish they may find them?"
The gentleman seemed at a loss how to continue the conversation. "I hope you are satisfied with the orchestra," he said after a pause.
"No, I am not," said Jack. "They are over civilized. They are as much afraid of showing their individuality as if they were common gentlemen. You cannot handle a musical instrument with kid gloves on. However, they did better than I hoped. They are at least not coarse. That young woman is a genius."
"Ye-es. Almost a genius. She is young, of course. She has not the—I should call it the gigantic power and energy of such a player, for instance, as— "
Pshaw!" said Jack, interrupting him. "I, or anybody else, can get excited with the swing of a Chopin's polonaise, and thrash it out of the piano until the room shakes. But she! You talk of making a pianoforte sing—a child that can sing itself can do that. But she can make it speak. She has eloquence, the first and last quality of a great player, as it is of a great man. The finale of the fantasia is too coarse for her: it does violence to her nature. It was written to be played by a savage—like me."
"Oh, undoubtedly, undoubtedly! She is a remarkable player. I did not for a moment intend to convey—" Here Manlius rapped his desk; and Jack, with a unceremonious nod to his interlocutor, left the platform. As he passed the door leading to the public part of the hall, he heard the voice of the elder lady. "My child, they seek to deceive you. This Monsieur Jacques, with whom you are to make your debut here, is he famous in England? Not at all. My God! He is an unknown man."
"Be tranquil, mother. He will not long be unknown.
Jack opened the door a little way; thrust his face
through; and smiled pleasantly at the pianist. Her
mother, seeing her start, turned and saw him grimacing
within a yard of her.
"Ah, Lord Jesus!" she exclaimed in German, recoiling from him. He chuckled and abruptly shut himself out of her view as the opening Coriolan overture sounded from the orchestra, The old gentleman who had congratulated him had rejoined the others in the stalls.
"Well," said one of them: "is your man delighted with himself?"
"N-no, I cannot say that he is—or rather perhaps he is too much so. I am sorry to say that he appears to rather morose—soured by his early difficulties, perhaps. He is certainly not an agreeable person to speak to."
"What did you expect?"said another gentleman coldly. "A man who degrades music to be the vehicle of his own coarse humor, and shews by his method of doing it an ignorant contempt for those laws by which the great composers established order in the chaos of sounds, is not likely to display a courteous disposition and refined nature in the ordinary business of life."
"I assure you, Professor," said a third, who had the score of the fantasia open on his knees, "this chap must know a devil of a lot. He plays old Harry with the sonata form; but he must do it on purpose, you know, really."
The gentleman addressed as Professor looked severely and incredulously at the other. "I really cannot listen to such things whilst they are playing Beethoven," he said. "I have protested against Mr Jack and his like; and my protest has passed unheeded. I wash my hands of the consequences. The Antient Orpheus Society will yet acknowledge that I did well when I counseled it to renounce the devil and all his works." He turned away; sat down on a stall a little way off; and gave all his attention ostentatiously to "Coriolan."
The pianist came presently and sat near him. The others quickly surrounded her; but she did not speak to them, and shewed by her attitude that she did not wish to be spoken to. Her mother, who did not care for Coriolan, and wanted to go home, knitted and looked appealingly at her from time to time, not venturing to express her impatience before so many members of the Antient Orpheus Society. At last Manlius came down; and the whole party rose and went into the performers' room.
"How do you find our orchestra?" said Manlius to her as she took up her muff.
"It is magnificent," she replied. "So refined, so quiet, so convenable! It is like the English gentleman." Manlius smirked. Jack, who had reappeared on the outskirts of the group with his hat on—a desperately ill-used hat—added:
"A Lithuanian or Hungarian orchestra could not play like that, eh?"
"No, truly," said the Polish lady, with a little shrug. "I do not think they could."
"You flatter us," said Manlius bowing. Jack began to laugh. The Polish lady hastily made her adieux and went out into Piccadilly, where a cab was brought for her. Her mother got in; and she was about follow when she heard Jack's voice again, at her elbow.
"May I send you some music?"
"If you will so gracious, Monsieur."
"Good. What direction shall I give your driver?"
"F—f—you call it Feetzroysquerre?"
"Fitzroy Square," shouted Jack to the cabman. The hansom went off; and he, running recklessly through the mud to a passing Hammersmith omnibus, which was full inside, climbed to the roof, and was borne away in the rain.