Romance and Reality (Landon)/Chapter 8
CHAPTER VIII.
"And music too—dear music, which can touch
Beyond all else the soul that loves it much."
Moore.
"Your destiny is in her hands" ay, utterly: the Society for the Diffusion of Useful Knowledge does not depend more on its encyclopædia, Mr. Brougham—the new tragedy on Macready—the balance of Europe on the Duke—none of these are so utterly dependent as a young lady on her chaperone. She may be a beauty—but the Medicean herself would require announcing as Venus: we all see with other people's eyes, especially in matters of taste. She may be rich—but an heiress, like a joint-stock company, requires to be properly advertised. She may be witty—but bon-mots require to be repeated rather than heard for a reputation; and who is to do this but a chaperone?—That being of delicate insinuations, of confidential whispers, of research in elder brothers, of exclusiveness in younger ones—she of praises and partners for her own protégée, of interruptions, ifs, and buts, for others. But, as Ude says of a forcemeat ball, "il faut un génie pour cela," and to that Lady Alicia made no pretensions.
Evening after evening Emily stepped into the carriage with all the slowness of discontent, and flung off robe and wreath on her return with all the pettishness of disappointment. In the mean time her uncle was quite edified by her letters: she spoke with such regret of the country, with its simple and innocent pleasures, how different to the weariness which attended London dissipation; she was eloquent on the waste of time, the heartlessness of its pursuits; she anticipated with so much delight her return to the friends of her youth, that they scarcely knew whether to be most enchanted with her affection or her sense. What a foundation mortified vanity is for philosophy!
The Opera was the only place where she had experienced unmixed gratification: from her first glance at its magnificent outline—its sea of white waving plumes, with many a bright eye and jewelled arm shining like its meteors, its beautiful faces, seen in all the advantage of full dress—full dress, which, like Florimel's magic girdle, is the true test of beauty—to the moment when she lingered to catch the last swell of the superb orchestra—she was "under the wand of the enchanter." Emily possessed what, like songs and sonnets, must be born with you,—a musical ear; that sixth sense, in search of which you may subscribe to the Ancient Music and the Philharmonic, you may go to every concert—you may go into ecstasies, and encore every song—you may prefer Italian singing, talk learnedly of tone and touch, all in vain—a musical ear is no more to be acquired than Lady H.'s beauty or Mrs. T.'s grace.
"What a pity," said old Lord E., a man whom a peerage spoilt for a professor, whose heart had performed Cowley's ballad for the whole succession of prima donnas,—"what a pity you have not seen Pasta—a Greek statue stepped from its pedestal, and animated by the Promethean fire of genius! Why is not such personified poetry immortal? My feeling of regret for my grandchildren half destroys my enjoyment of the present; it is the feeling of a patriot, Miss Arundel. Every other species of talent carries with it its eternity; we enjoy the work of the poet, the painter, the sculptor, only as thousands will do after us; but the actor—his memory is with his generation, and that passes away. What a slight idea even I, who speak as a last year's eye-witness, can give of her magnificent Semiramide, defying even fate—of the deep passionate love, ever the ill-requited, expressed in her Medea; her dark hair bound in its classical simplicity round her fine head, her queen-like step—Miss Arundel, I am very sorry for you;" and he stopped in one of those deep pauses of emotion, when the feeling is too great for words.
At this moment Sontag burst upon the ear with one of those Æolian sweeps of music so peculiarly her own: "Can any thing be more exquisite?" exclaimed Emily.
"Granted," returned Lord E. ; "musical talent is at its perfection in her—the finest natural organ modulated by first-rate science; but where is the mind of Pasta? It is folly to compare beings so opposite: like the child, when asked which he preferred, some grapes or a nectarine, I answer, 'both.' The one is the woman of genius—the other a most lovely creature, with the finest of voices."
"How beautiful she is!" rejoined Emily, adhering with true feminine pertinacity to her opinion, though very willing to choose new ground for her argument.
"First of all, allow me to observe, I hate to hear one woman praise another's beauty; they do it with such a covenanting air of self-sacrifice, such vain-glorious setting forth of–'There, you see I am not the least envious.' Secondly, I beg to differ from you: I remember anxiety was wound up to its highest of expectation when the fair songstress first appeared: she advanced to the front of the stage—her white arms in that half-crossed, half-clasped attitude, which so deprecatingly expresses female timidity—a burst of applause went round in compliment to those superlatively snowy hands and arms; next, she made a step forward, and in so doing displayed a foot, small enough for the slipper which the stork so maliciously dropped to waken the Egyptian king from his reverie—and a second round of applause announced due appreciation of that aërial foot; finally, the eyes were raised, and the face turned to the audience, but the face was received in deep silence: that first opinion was the true one. But wait till the next scene, and we shall agree—for our admiration of Malibran is mutual."
"My first impression of her," said Emily, "was very striking; it was at an evening concert, which, like many others—when some three-drawing-roomed lady enacts patroness, and throws open her house for the sake of tickets, strangers, and a paragraph—was rather dimly lighted. Malibran was seated in an open window, round which some creeping plant hung in profuse luxuriance; the back-ground was a sky of the deepest blue and clearest moonlight—so that her figure was thrown out in strong relief. Her hair was just bound round her head, with a blue wreath quite at the back, as in some of the antique figures of the nymphs, who seem to have wreathed the flowers they had gathered. She was pale, and her large dark eyes filled with that lustrous gaze of absorbed attention only given to music. I thought, what a lovely picture she would have made!"
But here a song commenced; and the silence enforced by a schoolmistress was not stricter than that Lord E. held it a duty to observe during singing.
By the bye, both in print and parlance, how much nonsense is set forth touching "the English having no soul for music!" The love of music, like a continent, may be divided into two parts; first, that scientific appreciation which depends on natural organisation and highly cultivated taste; and, secondly, that love of sweet sounds, for the sake of the associations linked with them, and the feelings they waken from the depths of memory: the latter is a higher love than the former, and in the first only are we English deficient. The man who stands listening to even a barrel-organ, because it repeats the tones "he loved from the lips of his nurse"—or who follows a common ballad-singer, because her song is familiar in its sweetness, or linked with touching words, or hallowed by the remembrance of some other and dearest voice—surely that man has a thousand times more "soul for music" than he who raves about execution, chromatic runs, semi-tones, &c. We would liken music to Aladdin's lamp—worthless in itself, not so for the spirits which obey its call. We love it for the buried hopes, the garnered memories, the tender feelings, it can summon with a touch.