Musicians of To-Day | Page 6

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 _Iphig��nie 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...." _(M��moires_, 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 Caf�� 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: _M��moires_, 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 In��s 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 Legouv��, 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 Legouv��, "tragic and silly at the same time? I should deserve to go to hell if I wasn't there already."]
[Footnote 19: _M��moires_, 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 are mistaken; I asked for Mme. Berlioz.'
"'And I tell you, I am Mme. Berlioz.'
"'No, you are not. You are speaking of the old Mme. Berlioz, the one who was abandoned; I am speaking of the young and pretty and loved one. Well, that is myself!'
"And Recio went out and banged the door after her.
"Legouv�� said to Berlioz, 'Who told you this abominable thing? I suppose she who did it; and then she boasted about it into the bargain. Why didn't you turn her