Fragments Of An Autobiography Part 20

I have two short letters written to the same friend and dated 1869 and 1871, not of general interest, but the latter concluding with the characteristic sentence:

"Il meglio sarebbe che si aprisse la via cercata per lunghi anni da noi; e s'aprira; ma siamo corrotti e privi di coraggio morale.

"Persisto nondimeno e persister finche vivo."

"The best would be, that the road should open which we have sought for many years, and open it will; but we are corrupt and devoid of moral courage. I persist nevertheless, and shall persist as long as I live."

The epistles he received he sometimes showed me as curiosities. Some came from his admirers, other from his detractors, either frequently total strangers to him. There were letters couched in terms of most eccentric adulation, others that unceremoniously relegated him to the regions of perdition. One merely requested him to go to the antipodes, in order that he might be well out of the way of regenerated Italy.

Another, less urbane, addressed him as "Uomo aborrito!" ("abhorred man"), and continued in a similar strain of abuse. Mazzini took it all pleasantly; the lion's tail was once for all proof against any amount of pulling.

The patriotic dreams of Mazzini were gradually to be realised, in a measure, at least; for although his ideal--a Republic in place of a Monarchy--seemed hopeless of attainment, the hated foreigner was expelled, or had retired from Italian soil, and a united people joined hands from the Alps to the Adriatic.

He had returned to his native land, and there, active and uncompromising to the last, he died at Pisa, on March 10, 1872, in the Casa Rosselli. A private letter in the possession of Mr. Stansfeld gives some particulars of his last hours. He was perfectly tranquil, and free from suffering, but sank into a gradual stupor. During the day, at times, his hands moved mechanically, as if he were holding and smoking a cigar. Madame Rosselli asked him why he did that; but his mind was wandering, he did not understand her, and answered an imaginary question. He roused himself, and looking straight at her, he said, with great animation and intenseness, "Believe in G.o.d? Yes, indeed I do believe in G.o.d." These were his last words of consciousness.

A friend of his, writing a few days after the fatal 10th of March, tells how the mystery which surrounded him all his life continued to envelop him to the moment when death broke the seals of secrecy. Then, for the first time, the good people of Pisa learnt that the mild and retiring Mr. Francis Braun, who had long lived within their walls, was no other than the redoubtable Mazzini. He had come to their city in the February of the preceding year, and had remained till August, returning from Switzerland with the first frosts of November. The authorities doubtless knew perfectly well who the supposed Englishman was, who spent all his days in study and all his evenings in the company of the self-same small family circle. But they were to let him alone. It was not for the first time that they wisely ignored his presence. The chief difficulty of the Italian Government had been, not to find him and seize him, but to find and not to molest him. On one occasion the Neapolitan police put the Government into much perturbation by telegraphing that it was "impossible to avoid arresting Mazzini."

On another occasion--it was in 1857--the house of the Marchese Pareto, where Mazzini was staying, was surrounded by the police, and a large military force in attendance made a portentous show. The Quaestor, an old schoolfellow of Mazzini, formally demands admittance in the King's name, when the door is opened by Mazzini himself, disguised as a servant. The Quaestor asks to speak to the Marquis, and is forthwith introduced by the obsequious flunkey. Did the Quaestor recognise his old friend? Our informant believes he did. He tells us that diligent search was made throughout the house; that nothing was found but a stove full of ashes, the remains of papers just burnt; that the Marquis was carried off by the police in his carriage, to make certain depositions, which meant nothing; and that the servant was left behind.

In like manner Mazzini was suffered to remain undisturbed in Pisa.

Dangerous though some timorous officials deemed him to be, the Government knew full well that he would be far more dangerous as a captive than as a free man.

To the citizens of Pisa his _incognito_ was so complete, that even the doctor who attended him in his last illness did not know his patient.

On the Wednesday before his death he wrote an article for the _Unita Italiana_ on Renan's book, "La Reforme Intellectuelle et Morale de la France." He talked rarely about politics even to his intimate friends.

Occasionally he would, however, break out into anathemas against the "International"; his eyes would then flash fire, and he would use strong language against Ledru Rollin, Quinet, "e tutti quanti," who, he would say, "might have saved France, but who, by mere inaction, had abandoned her to the most pernicious of impossible delusions."

The news that his remains had been embalmed by Professor Zorini and placed in a metal coffin, into which a gla.s.s had been inserted, with a view to exhibiting them on the anniversary of his death, raised an indignant protest from some of his nearest friends in England. They wrote warmly denouncing what they declared would most have wounded and outraged him. "His whole life," says Madame Venturi, in a letter to an Italian friend, "was one long protest against materialism, and they make of his sacred corpse a lasting statue of materialism, and of his monument an altar to the idolatry of matter. Write to the people and tell them that he expressed a wish to lie by the side of his mother."

The truth concerning the matter which led to so warm a protest, is this: Mazzini was only partially embalmed, and lay in state in a small room on the ground floor of the Casa Rosselli. A tricolour flag covered his breast, and a laurel wreath crowned his head. A plaster cast and a photograph had been taken by Alinari. On the birthday of the King of Italy and of his son the remains of their potent adversary were carried on a simple car to the railway station outside the Porta Nuova. The pall-bearers were six of his nearest friends, besides a student and a working-man; deputations from neighbouring cities, and crowds of sympathisers, formed a procession and lined the streets. Conspicuous on the coffin was a wreath with the inscription, "The Americans to Mazzini"; it had been placed there by the consular representatives of the United States. On its arrival in Genoa, the remains lay in state again, but for one day only. Then better counsels, more in harmony with the patriot's wishes, prevailed, and his body was placed in the sepulchre, where no human eye has seen it since. His burial-place was selected next to that of his mother, and now her tomb is enclosed with his.

It was after his death only that the great agitator's life-work began to be fully recognised by his countrymen. A reaction set in in his favour; the Parliament of Rome pa.s.sed a resolution expressing the grief of the nation at the death of "The Apostle of Italian Unity"; public meetings were held, and many were the marks of respect paid to him throughout Italy.

This seemed to me an opportune moment to add my small tribute to his memory, so I called on the Marquis d'Azeglio, then Italian amba.s.sador to England, and offered to present my portrait of Mazzini to the Italian nation, that it might be placed in one of their public galleries. But I was to be disappointed, for the marquis bowed me out, very politely, I must say, but fully giving me to understand that it was one thing to tolerate the demonstrations in favour of Mazzini, and another to do honour to him and his portrait. The picture has since gone through one or two similar experiences. What will become of it eventually I do not know, but I am happy to have it with me still.

On the second of November, some ten years ago, I happened to be in Genoa. It was the day of "Tutti Morti" (All Souls' Day), the great holiday, tearful and cheerful, on which all good Catholics make their pilgrimage to the cemeteries where rest their departed friends. A steady stream of visitors was flowing towards the "Cimetero di Staglieno." I joined it, and was soon wandering through arcades filled with marble tributes to the memory of the dead, some of the sculptors' work being very beautiful. Then, across the Campo Santo--the consecrated field--all bedecked with flowers and garlands, I came to where the path winds upwards to the graves and monuments that dot the hills above. There stands Mazzini's tomb, a mausoleum worthy of the man, severe and solemn.

Two short, thick-set columns mark the entrance and carry a ma.s.sive stone, on which is inscribed in plain large characters the name "Giuseppe Mazzini." That day the monument and the surroundings seemed doubly impressive, for a guard of honour had been placed to hold watch by the great liberator's tomb. It was here, then, that the exile and the outlaw had at last found rest in the land he loved so well--in Genoa, the city of his birth.

I sought out a place from which I could make a water-colour sketch, and, as I sat painting, my thoughts reverted with reverence and with love to the master and to the friend.

[Ill.u.s.tration]

CHAPTER IX

ROSSINI

I well remember my first introduction to Madame Rossini in April 1854. I was sitting with the Maestro in his study one morning whilst he was finis.h.i.+ng his toilet; his valet had selected one of two brown wigs, and adjusted it on his ill.u.s.trious master's head, leaving the other, placed on a little stand, to ornament the mantelpiece. Next he brought him a silver bowl full of milk and one or two of those cunningly-twisted rolls or crescents, the very thought of which conveys to the appet.i.te's memory a whiff of dainty Paris.

Rossini liked to be informed of the latest news, meaning the up-to-date incidents in Paris society, and to be told what the wicked world was saying, and what _bons-mots_ the clever ones had made; so we young fellows were expected to drop in occasionally at an early hour in the morning and keep him posted up. His comments on our news were always much more _spirituels_ than the best of _bons-mots_ we could impart, and frequently a good deal more spicy than our versions of Parisian doings.

I dare say then I was carrying coals to Newcastle, and he was making them blaze, when the door was abruptly thrust open, and a bejewelled hand--it was Madame Rossini's--triumphantly appeared, flouris.h.i.+ng a ham of unusual dimensions, that she had brought for the master to see and to rejoice over.

A pair of piercing dark eyes next swept the room to see who might be there. Finding there was n.o.body--a young man like myself not counting--the hand and the eyes were followed by the rest of her. She struck me as every inch a queen--a tragedy queen, off duty. Her black hair hung dishevelled over her shoulders, and she was clad in the style the French call "neglected." The upper part of her cla.s.sical figure was more or less concealed beneath a loose white garment, which I have since learnt to a.s.sociate with hair-combing. Her lower limbs showed off to great advantage under a heavy striped petticoat; that at least I think it must have been; if it was meant for a dress, it was certainly cut several inches too short.

Whilst I was contemplating her, she and her husband were examining the ham, and commenting upon it _en amateurs_. I was called upon to admire it, and incidentally introduced to Madame. Disgracefully ignorant as I was of pork-flesh, and being of those honest youths who call a pig a pig, I found nothing better to say than, "Voila ce que j'appelle un cochon." That seemed about as much as they expected, and I was allowed to pat it on the hip.

And here I cannot help leaping at a bound from 1854 to 1896, and from Paris to Venice. Just as I was sitting, pen in hand, and trying to conjure up a correct image of Madame Rossini, a living biographical dictionary, in the shape of an elderly lady, walked in, who had been sent round to show me some valuable old lace she had to dispose of. The grand race of the _decaduti_ (the come-down in the world) is by no means extinct, and Signora Baldazzi was a pleasant representative of it. I welcomed her, and, having made the acquisition of some of her lace, I chanced to elicit, in further friendly conversation, that she was a teacher of music, and had studied for years at the Liceo Bologna, when Rossini was director there.

She had plenty of "I well remembers" to start with, so she was soon telling me how good and kind he was, and how brusque and rude, and how he spared neither teachers nor pupils. Even _il maestro Cappeletti, il professore di timpani_, she said, speaking of him with the greatest respect, came in for his share, when, in a rehearsal under Rossini, he made some blunder. "Asino," cried Rossini, "That sort of thing was not unusual," added my informant; "one always expected something hot from him." "Do I remember Madame Rossini, la Pelissier? Ma che! I see her now in her red corsage and many-coloured petticoat, leading her dog by a string. I knew la Collbran, too; his first wife, you know. They had been married a good many years, when he got tired of her; he told her so, and said he wanted a change. She did not mind the change, but she would not leave the house for him or for anybody else; so she lived in one apartment whilst la Pelissier and Rossini occupied another; but they all took their meals together, and la Collbran did the housekeeping." This lady, it will be remembered, was the famous singer who created some of the princ.i.p.al parts in Rossini's opera. I thought the story of the joint _menage_ so peculiar, that I subjected the good lady, my informant, to a severe cross-examination, but I did not succeed in shaking her evidence.

Future biographers may further look into the matter if they care.

I return to that corner house of the Rue de la Chaussee d'Antin, where the maestro lived. One morning I was there with my cousin, Ernst Jaques, when Rossini's old friend Scitivaux came in.

"There," said Rossini, "there is what I promised you, and I have written all you want to know inside." With that he handed a copy of the "Barbiere" to Scitivaux, who, at the sight of the gift and its precious dedication, broke into raptures of grat.i.tude; I am not sure whether he wept or laughed on the other's shoulder; but I distinctly recollect he was immediately turned out. "Take it, but go," he was ordered; "I don't want you here. Mr. Jaques is just going to play to me. No; you can read that afterwards." A final continental hug, and he and the book were outside. So was I, for I thought it prudent not to await definite instructions, and I was dying to know what was the purport of the exciting inscription.

So we stood in the hall reading it, and I was treated to the after-glow of Monsieur Scitivaux's raptures.

The dedication was in Italian, and related how Rossini had composed the "Barbiere" for the Duke Cesarini, the director of the Teatro Argentina in Rome, to retrieve for him the fortunes of a bad season. Rossini went on to say that he had written to Paisiello, who had previously treated the same subject, to a.s.sure him that he in no way sought to compete with that master, well aware as he was of his own inferiority, and that he had avoided as much as possible to use the same incidents in his libretto. "I thought," he worded it, "that, having taken this precaution, I might consider myself safe from the censure of his friends and his legitimate admirers. I was mistaken! On the appearance of my opera, they precipitated themselves like wild beasts upon the beardless maestrino, and the first performance was a most stormy one. I, however, remained unconcerned; and, whilst the public hissed, I applauded my performers. Once the storm blown over, at the second performance, my 'Barbiere' had an excellent razor, and shaved the Romans so well that, to use theatrical language, I was carried home in triumph. There, my good friend, I have done what you desired. Be happy, and believe me, yours affectionately,

GIACOMO ROSSINI.

"PARIS, _22 Apr. 1860_."

The facts related were well known, but here they were confirmed by the master's own narrative, and the recipient's happiness was unbounded.

The Jaques who was going to play to Rossini was my cousin, a partner in one of the old banking firms of Hamburg, and, besides, a thorough artist and virtuoso on that soul-stirring instrument, the violoncello. But it was not to have his soul stirred that Rossini gathered young musicians around him at that early hour of the day. They came to play his last compositions to him, and they remained to practise them at his house.

You could often hear the sounds of various instruments proceeding from as many various rooms. The piano predominated, for at that time of his life Rossini was most a.s.siduously composing for that instrument, labouring, as it seemed to me, under the fond delusion that he had discovered a new vein in the old mine which had produced such a fund of musical wealth. Sometimes he reminded one of Hummel's style, sometimes I thought I traced a Weber idea as it would be if filtered through the pen of a Mendelssohn. He would on no account allow his MSS. to leave the house. "Jamais," he said when my cousin expressed the wish to give the violoncello piece a day's practising at home, "Jamais; je ne veux pas dependre du public." So the performers had to go to the Chaussee d'Antin, and prepare themselves there for the Sat.u.r.day evenings at which the latest works of the master were produced.

Amongst those privileged young musicians was the pianist, Georges Pfeiffer, who has since become so popular a composer. Rossini would give him such curiously named productions to study as "Cornichons," "Radis,"

and the like. There was also a "Bolero tartare," and a certain Rondo in the style of Offenbach, the famous composer of "La belle Helene," "Orfee aux Enfers," and other operettas that for years drew all Paris to the "Bouffes." He was universally credited with exercising the baneful influence of the evil eye, and Rossini, being superst.i.tious, had headed his ma.n.u.script with a drawing of a _gettatura_, which should act as a charm to protect him. Georges Pfeiffer, no less superst.i.tious--he always a.s.serted he had good reason to be so--had managed to play the opening theme of the Rondo with the two fingers which in the _gettatura_ are supposed to lay the evil spirit; and Rossini so fully entered into this serio-comic solution of the difficulty, that he expressed his warm approval, and added Pfeiffer's fingering to the ma.n.u.script.

Henri Wieniawski, the violinist, and his brother Joseph, the pianist, were also great friends of Rossini's. He was present at Henri's wedding.

The bride, Miss Hampton, was lovely, the guests distinguished, and the wedding breakfast sumptuous, and all would have gone well if the best man--or the next best--had not unfortunately made an eloquent speech to propose the health of a near and dear relative of the bride's who had been buried not so very long ago.

On those famous Sat.u.r.day evenings I was a frequent visitor and attentive listener, but my own performances were reserved for those occasions when I was alone with the master.

He knew me to be the unworthy bearer of an honoured musical name, but he had by chance discovered that, however great my deficiencies, there was a little musical vein in me which he thought I might exploit. It is regrettable that one cannot write one's reminiscences without mentioning one's self. Things go so smoothly as long as one records the doings of others, but become so puzzling when one has to introduce the _Ego_.

Between self-laudation and mock modesty there is not much to choose, and if you try to steer clear of the one, you are sure to fall into the other. I must take my chance though, and say that that vein of music, encouraged by the kind maestro, has many a time been a source of infinite delight to me, and to my friends too, or they would not have dragged me to the piano whenever they felt that they had had enough good music and now wanted the other thing. I would show them how easy it is to compose a masterpiece if you only know the secrets of the trade, and I would notably convince them that, if they would follow some very simple directions of mine, they could then and there write an Italian opera.

Singing-masters, it is well known, never agree as to the best way of cultivating a voice entrusted to their care. One will work a mezzo-soprano downwards to a contralto, the other upwards to a high soprano. With me the wiseacres never could settle which of my voices I ought to have developed--my ba.s.s voice, my tenor, or my soprano. In the meanwhile I alternately used each, distributing them according to the dramatic needs of the situation created, the story, to be sure, being made up to suit the madness of the hour. In the front line came the love duets between tenor and soprano, with moon-light accompaniment; then peasants' dances interrupted by thunder-storms, and drinking songs for the baritone, backed by an approving chorus. And so on and on till the tragedy business was reached: "Ye padre furioso e figlia infelice," as Du Maurier calls them, when he relates his performance at Blankenberghe "in imitation of his ill.u.s.trious friend, Felix Bobtailo."

I must have been endowed with an extraordinary amount of boldness and recklessness in those days, or I never could have given the great maestro an insight into these my accomplishments. It came about in this way:--

Conversation had turned on the curious practice which prevailed formerly, to write the princ.i.p.al men's part in opera for an artificial male soprano, and that led to my remarking that Rossini and his contemporaries had done good service in banis.h.i.+ng that incongruous personage from the stage, but that they had still left undisturbed some puzzling anomalies in the distribution of parts. There remained the fact that a man has a tenor voice as long as he is a bachelor and a lover, but, when he becomes a father, he develops into a ba.s.so profundo; and, by way of pointing to another anomaly, I wanted to know why, when the prim'uomo and the primadonna, with whose affections we so warmly sympathised, have clandestinely met and resolved to fly from a tyrannic parent, they should compromise their safety by singing a duet of inordinate length: first warbling tender melodies, then shouting stern resolves, practising scales, shakes, and dangerous runs to ill.u.s.trate the course of true love, and finally proclaiming their immutable determination to live and die together, in strains so wild and so powerfully backed by all the bra.s.s instruments of the orchestra, that the irate father is invariably brought on to the stage, naturally to wreck the lovers' fondest hopes.