Autobiographical Reminiscences with Family Letters and Notes on Music Part 1

Autobiographical Reminiscences with Family Letters and Notes on Music.

by Charles Gounod.

INTRODUCTION

_The following pages contain the story of the most important events of my artistic life, of the mark left by them on my personal existence, of their influence on my career, and of the thoughts they have suggested to my mind.

I do not desire to make any capital out of whatever public interest may attach to my own person. But I believe the clear and simple narrative of an artist's life may often convey useful information, hidden under a word or fact of no apparent importance, but which tallies exactly with the humour or the need of some particular moment.

An everyday occurrence, a hastily spoken word, often holds its own opportunity.

Experience teaches; and that which has been useful and salutary to me may perchance serve others too.

The Author of his own Memoirs must perforce speak frequently, nay constantly, about himself. It has been my endeavour in this book to do so with absolute impartiality. I can lay claim to scrupulous exactness both in detailing facts and in reporting the remarks of others. I have given my candid opinion of my own work, but the fable tells us the owl misjudged her own offspring, and I may well be mistaken in mine.

Should Posterity deem me worth remembering at all, it will judge whether my estimate of myself is a correct one. I can trust Time to allot me, like every other man, my proper place, or to cast me down if I have been unduly exalted heretofore.

My story bears witness to my love and veneration for the being who bestows more love than any other earthly creature--my mother! Maternity is the most perfect reflection of the great Providence; the purest, warmest ray He casts on earthly life; its inexhaustible solicitude is the direct effluence of G.o.d's eternal care for His own creatures.

If I have worked any good, by word or deed, during my life, I owe it to my mother, and to her I give the praise. She nursed me, she brought me up, she formed me; not in her own image, alas!--that would have been too fair. But the fault of what is lacking lies with me, and not with her.

She sleeps beneath a stone as simple as her blameless life had been. May this tribute from the son she loved so tenderly form a more imperishable crown than the wreaths of fading immortelles he laid upon her grave, and clothe her memory with a halo of reverence and respect he fain would have endure long after he himself is dead and gone._

CHARLES GOUNOD

I

_CHILDHOOD_

My mother, whose maiden name was Victoire Lemachois, was born at Rouen on the 4th of June 1780. Her father was a member of the French magistracy. Her mother, a Mdlle. Heuzey, was a lady of remarkable intelligence and marvellous artistic apt.i.tude. She was a musician, and a poetess as well. She composed, sang, and played on the harp; and, as I have often heard my mother say, she could act tragedy like Mdlle.

d.u.c.h.esnois, or comedy like Mdlle. Mars.

Attracted by such an uncommon combination of exceptional natural talent, the best families in the neighbourhood--the D'Houdetots, the De Mortemarts, the Saint Lamberts, and the D'Herbouvilles--continually sought her, and literally made her their spoilt child.

But, alas! those talents which give life its greatest charm and seduction do not always ensure its happiness. Total disparity of tastes, of inclinations, and of instincts seldom conduce to domestic peace, and it is dangerous to dream of trying to govern real life by ideal rules of conduct. The Angel of Peace soon spread her wings and deserted the household where so many influences combined to make her stay impossible, and my mother's childhood suffered from the inevitable and painful consequences. Her life was saddened, perforce, at an age when she and sorrow should have been strangers.

But G.o.d had endowed her with a strong heart, a sound judgment, and indomitable courage. Bereft of a mother's watchful care, actually obliged to teach herself how to read and write, she also learnt, alone and una.s.sisted, the rudiments of music and drawing, arts by which she was ere long to earn her living.

During the turmoil of the Revolution my grandfather lost his judicial post at Rouen. My mother's one idea was to get work, so as to be useful to him. She looked out for piano pupils, found a few, and thus, at eleven years of age, she began that toilsome life which in after years, during her widowhood, was to enable her to bring up and educate her children.

Spurred by her constant desire to improve, and by a sense of duty which was the dominant feature of her whole life, she realised that a good teacher must acquire everything that is likely to add weight and authority to her instructions. She resolved, therefore, to place herself under the care of some well-known master, to learn all that was necessary to ensure her own credit and satisfy her conscience. To this end, little by little--penny by penny, even--she laid by part of the miserable income which her music lessons brought in, and when a sufficient sum had been acc.u.mulated she took the coach, which in those days did the journey from Rouen to Paris in three days. On her arrival in Paris she went straight to Adam, the professor of pianoforte-playing at the Conservatoire, father of Adolphe Adam, the author of "Le Chalet"

and many other charming works.

Adam received her kindly, and listened to her attentively. He at once recognised her possession of those qualities which were to foster and strengthen the interest primarily aroused by her happy facility for her art.

As my mother's youth forbade her residing permanently in Paris, to benefit by a regular and consecutive course of instruction, it was arranged she should travel up from Rouen once in every three months and take a lesson.

One lesson every three months! A short allowance indeed! and one which could hardly have seemed likely to repay the cost involved. But certain individuals are living proofs of the miracle of the loaves and fishes, and this narrative will show, by many another example, that my mother was one of them.

A person destined later on to enjoy such solid and well-earned renown as a teacher of music was not, could not be, in fact, a pupil capable of forgetting the smallest item of her master's rare and invaluable lessons. Adam was himself greatly struck by the improvement apparent between each _seance_ and the next. As much to mark his appreciation of his young pupil's personal courage, as of her musical talent, he contrived to get a piano lent her gratis. This allowed of her studying a.s.siduously without bearing the burden entailed on mind and purse of paying for her instrument, which, small as it was, had been a heavy tax upon her small resources.

Soon after this a circ.u.mstance occurred which had a decisive influence on my mother's whole future life.

The fas.h.i.+onable pianoforte composers at that time were Clementi, Steibelt, Dussek, and some others. I do not mention Mozart, who had already blazed out upon the musical world, following closely upon Haydn; nor do I refer to the great Sebastian Bach, whose immortal collection of preludes and fugues, "Das Wohltemporirte Clavier," published a century ago, has given the law to pianoforte study, and become the unquestioned text-book of musical composition. Beethoven, still a young man, had not yet reached the pinnacle of fame on which his mighty works have now placed him.

About this period a German musician, named Hullmandel, a violinist of great merit, and a contemporary and friend of Beethoven's, came and settled in France, with a view to making a connection as an accompanist.

He stayed some time at Rouen, and while there expressed a wish to hear the performances of those local young ladies who were considered to have the greatest musical talent. A sort of compet.i.tion was organised, in which my mother took part. She had the good fortune of being particularly noticed and complimented by Hullmandel, who at once fixed on her as a fit person to receive lessons from him, and to perform with him at certain houses in the town where music was carefully and even pa.s.sionately cultivated.

Here ends all I have to tell about my mother's childhood and youth. I know no further details of her life until her marriage, which took place in 1806. She was then twenty-six years and a half old.

My father, Francois Louis Gounod, was born in 1758, and was therefore slightly over forty-seven years of age at the time of his marriage. He was a painter of distinguished merit, and my mother has often told me that great contemporary artists, such as Gerard, Girodet, Guerin, Joseph Vernet, and Gros, considered him the best draughtsman of his day.

I remember a story about Gerard, which my mother used to tell with pardonable pride. Covered as he was with honour and glory, a Baron of the Empire, owning an enormous fortune, the famous artist was noted for the smartness of his carriages. While driving about one day, he happened to meet my father, who was walking. "What!" he cried, "Gounod on foot! and I in a carriage! What a shame!"

My father had studied under Lepicie with Carle Vernet (the son of Joseph and father of Horace of that ilk). Twice over he competed for the Grand Prix de Rome. His scrupulous conscientiousness and artistic modesty are best reflected by the following little incident which occurred during his youth. The subject given for the "Grand Prix" compet.i.tion on one of the occasions mentioned above was "The Woman taken in Adultery." Among the compet.i.tors were my father and the painter Drouais, whose remarkable picture gained him the Grand Prix. When Drouais showed him his canvas, my father told him frankly there could be no possible comparison between it and his own; and, once back in his studio, he destroyed his own work, which did not seem to him worthy to hang beside his comrade's masterpiece. This fact will give some idea of his artistic integrity, which never wavered between the call of justice and that of personal interest.

Highly educated, with a mind as refined as nature and study could make it, my father throughout his whole life shrank instinctively from undertaking any work of great magnitude. The lack of robust health may partly explain this peculiarity in a man of such great powers; perhaps, too, the cause may be discovered in his strong tendency towards absolute freedom and independence of thought. Either circ.u.mstance may explain his dislike to undertaking anything likely to absorb all his time and strength. The following anecdote gives colour to this view.

Monsieur Denon, at that time Curator of the Louvre Museum, and also, I believe, Superintendent of the Royal Museums of France, was an intimate friend of my father's, and had, besides, the highest opinion of his talent as a draughtsman and etcher. One day he invited him to execute a number of etchings of the drawings forming the collection known as the "Cabinet des Medailles," with an annual fee of 10,000 francs during the period covered by the work. Such an offer meant affluence to a needy household like ours, in those days especially. The sum would have provided ample support for husband, wife, and two children. Well! my father refused point-blank. He would only undertake to do a few specially ordered portraits and lithographs, some of which are of the highest artistic value, and carefully treasured by the descendants of those for whom they were originally executed.

Indeed, my mother's unconquerable energy had to a.s.sert itself often before these very portraits, with their delicate sense of perception and unerring talent of execution, could leave the studio. How many would even now have remained unfinished, had she not taken them in hand herself? How many times had she to set and clean the palettes with her own hands? And this was but a fraction of her task. As long as his artistic interest was awake;--while the human side of his model--the att.i.tude, the expression, the glance, the look, the Soul in fact--claimed his attention,--my father's work went merrily. But when it came to small accessories, such as cuffs and ornaments, embroideries and decorations, ah! then his interest failed him, and his patience too. So the poor wife took up the brush, cheerfully slaving at the dull details, and by dint of intelligence and courage finished the work begun with such enthusiasm and talent, and dropped from instinctive dread of being bored.

Happily my father had been induced to hold a regular drawing-cla.s.s in his own house. This, with what he made by painting, brought us in enough to live on, and indirectly, as will be apparent later, became the starting-point of my mother's career as a pianoforte teacher.

So the modest household lived on, till my father was carried off by congestion of the lungs on the 4th of May 1823. He was sixty-four years old, and left his widow with two boys--my elder brother, aged fifteen and a half, and myself, who would be five years old on the 17th of the following June.

My father, when he left this world, left us without a bread-winner. I will now proceed to show how my mother, by dint of her wonderful energy and unequalled tenderness, supplied in "over-flowing measure" that protection and support of which his death had robbed us.

In those days there lived, on the Quai Voltaire, a lithographer of the name of Delpech. It is not so very long since his name disappeared from the shop-front of the house he used to occupy. My father had not been dead many hours before my mother went to him.

"Delpech," she said, "my husband is dead. I am left alone with two boys to feed and educate. From this out I must be their mother and their father as well. I mean to work for them. I have come to ask you two things--first, how to sharpen a lithographer's style; second, how to prepare the stones.... Leave the rest to me; only I beg of you to get me work."

My mother's first care was to publish the fact that, if the parents of pupils at the drawing-cla.s.s would continue their patronage, there would be no interruption in the regular course of lessons.