Musicians of To-Day | Page 6

when it lacks food; and it is only satisfied by intense
delights, which give this great overflow of feeling an outlet. It is not a
state of spleen, though that may follow later ... spleen is rather the
congealing of all these emotions--the block of ice. Even when I am
calm I feel a little of this '_isolement_' on Sundays in summer, when
our towns are lifeless, and everyone is in the country; for I know that
people are enjoying themselves away from me, and I feel their absence.
The adagio of Beethoven's symphonies, certain scenes from Gluck's
Alceste and Armide, an air from his Italian opera Telemacco, the
Elysian fields of his Orfeo, will bring on rather bad attacks of this
suffering; but these masterpieces bring with them also an antidote--they
make one's tears flow, and then the pain is eased. On the other hand,
the adagio of some of Beethoven's sonatas and Gluck's _Iphigénie en
Tauride_ are full of melancholy, and therefore provoke spleen ... it is
then cold within, the sky is grey and overcast with clouds, the north

wind moans dully...." _(Mémoires_, I, 246).]
Who does not know his passion for Henrietta Smithson? It was a sad
story. He fell in love with an English actress who played Juliet (Was it
she or Juliet whom he loved?). He caught but a glance of her, and it
was all over with him. He cried out, "Ah, I am lost!" He desired her;
she repulsed him. He lived in a delirium of suffering and passion; he
wandered about for days and nights like a madman, up and down Paris
and its neighbourhood, without purpose or rest or relief, until sleep
overcame him wherever it found him--among the sheaves in a field
near Villejuif, in a meadow near Sceaux, on the bank of the frozen
Seine near Neuilly, in the snow, and once on a table in the Café
Cardinal, where he slept for five hours, to the great alarm of the waiters,
who thought he was dead.[17] Meanwhile, he was told slanderous
gossip about Henrietta, which he readily believed. Then he despised her,
and dishonoured her publicly in his Symphonie fantastique, paying
homage in his bitter resentment to Camille Moke, a pianist, to whom he
lost his heart without delay.
[Footnote 17: _Mémoires_, I, 98.]
After a time Henrietta reappeared. She had now lost her youth and her
power; her beauty was waning, and she was in debt. Berlioz's passion
was at once rekindled. This time Henrietta accepted his advances. He
made alterations in his symphony, and offered it to her in homage of
his love. He won her, and married her, with fourteen thousand francs
debt. He had captured his dream--Juliet! Ophelia! What was she really?
A charming Englishwoman, cold, loyal, and sober-minded, who
understood nothing of his passion; and who, from the time she became
his wife, loved him jealously and sincerely, and thought to confine him
within the narrow world of domestic life. But his affections became
restive, and he lost his heart to a Spanish actress (it was always an
actress, a virtuoso, or a part) and left poor Ophelia, and went off with
Marie Recio, the Inès of Favorite, the page of _Comte Ory_--a
practical, hardheaded woman, an indifferent singer with a mania for
singing. The haughty Berlioz was forced to fawn upon the directors of
the theatre in order to get her parts, to write flattering notices in praise

of her talents, and even to let her make his own melodies discordant at
the concerts he arranged.[18] It would all be dreadfully ridiculous if
this weakness of character had not brought tragedy in its train.
So the one he really loved, and who always loved him, remained alone,
without friends, in Paris, where she was a stranger. She drooped in
silence and pined slowly away, bedridden, paralysed, and unable to
speak during eight years of suffering. Berlioz suffered too, for he loved
her still and was torn with pity--"pity, the most painful of all
emotions."[19] But of what use was this pity? He left Henrietta to
suffer alone and to die just the same. And, what was worse, as we learn
from Legouvé, he let his mistress, the odious Recio, make a scene
before poor Henrietta.[20] Recio told him of it and boasted about what
she had done.
[Footnote 18: "Isn't it really devilish," he said to Legouvé, "tragic and
silly at the same time? I should deserve to go to hell if I wasn't there
already."]
[Footnote 19: _Mémoires_, II, 335. See the touching passages he wrote
on Henrietta Smithson's death.]
[Footnote 20: "One day, Henrietta, who was living alone at Montmartre,
heard someone ring the bell, and went to open the door.
"'Is Mme. Berlioz at home?'
"'I am Mme. Berlioz.'
"'You