by George Moore
Wagner had been all his life dreaming of an opera with a subjective hero. Christ first and then Buddha had suggested themselves as likely subjects. He had gone so far as to make sketches for both heroes, but both subjects had been rejected as unpractical, and he had fallen back on a pretty mediæval myth, and had shot into a pretty mediæval myth all the material he had accumulated for the other dramas, whose heroes were veritable heroes, men who had accomplished great things, men who had preached great doctrines and whose lives were symbols of their doctrines. The result of pouring this old wine into the new bottle was to burst the bottle.
In neither Christ nor Buddha did the question of sex arise, and that was the reason that Wagner eventually rejected both. He was as full of sex — mysterious, sub-conscious sex — as Rossetti himself. In Christ’s life there is the Magdalen, but how naturally harmonious, how implicit in the idea, are their relations, how concentric; but how excentric (using the word in its grammatical sense) are the relations of Parsifal to Kundry.... A redeemer is chaste, but he does not speak of his chastity nor does he think of it; he passes the question by. The figure of Christ is so noble, that whether God or man or both, it seems to us in harmony that the Magdalen should bathe his feet and wipe them with her hair, but the introduction of the same incident into “Parsifal” revolts. As Parsifal merely killed a swan and refused to be kissed — the other preached a doctrine in which beauty and wisdom touch the highest point, and his life was an exemplification of his doctrine of non-resistance— “Take ye and eat, for this is my body, and this is my blood.”
In “Parsifal” there was only the second act which he could admire without enormous reservations. The writing in the chorus of the “Flower Maidens” was, of course, irresistible — little cries, meaningless by themselves, but, when brought together, they created an enchanted garden, marvellous and seductive. But it was the duet that followed that compelled his admiration. Music hardly ever more than a recitative, hardly ever breaking into an air, and yet so beautiful! There the notes merely served to lift the words, to impregnate them with more terrible and subtle meaning; and the subdued harmonies enfolded them in an atmosphere, a sensual mood; and in this music we sink into depths of soul and float upon sullen and mysterious tides of life — those which roll beneath the phase of life which we call existence. But the vulgarly vaunted Good Friday music did not deceive him; at the second or third time of hearing he had perceived its insincerity. It was very beautiful music, but in such a situation sincerity was essential. The airs of this mock redeemer were truly unbearable, and the abjection of Kundry before this stuffed Christ revolted him. But the obtusely religious could not fail to be moved; the appeal of the chaste kiss, with little sexual cries all the while in the orchestra, could not but stir the vulgar heart to infinite delight, and the art was so dexterously beautiful that the intelligent were deceived. The artiste and the vulgarian held each other’s hands for the first time; they gasped a mutual wonder at their own perception and their unsuspected nobility of soul. “Parsifal,” he declared, with true Celtic love of exaggeration, “to be the oiliest flattery ever poured down the open throat of a liquorish humanity.”
As he spoke such sentences his face would light up with malicious humour, and he was so interested in the subject he discussed that his listener was forced to follow him. It was only in such moments of artistic discussion that his real soul floated up to the surface, and he, as it were, achieved himself. He knew, too, how to play with his listener, to wheedle and beguile him, for after a particularly aggressive phrase he would drop into a minor key, and his criticism would suddenly become serious and illuminative. To him “Parsifal” was a fresco, a decoration painted by a man whose true genius it was to reveal the most intimate secrets of the soul, to tell the enigmatic soul of longing as Leonardo da Vinci had done. But he had been led from the true path of his genius into the false one of a rivalry with Veronese. Only where Wagner is confiding a soul’s secret is he interesting, and in “Tannhäuser,” in this first flower of his dramatic and musical genius, he had perhaps told the story of his own soul more truly, more sincerely than elsewhere. To do that was the highest art. Sooner or later the sublimest imaginations pale before the simple telling of a personal truth, for the most personal truth is likewise the most universal. “Tannhäuser” is the story of humanity, for what is the human story if it isn’t the pursuit of an ideal?
And this essential and primal truth Evelyn revealed to him and the very spirit and sense of maidenhood, the centre and receptacle of life, the mysterious secret of things, the awful moment when the whisper of the will to live is heard in matter, the will which there is no denying, the surrender of matter, the awaking of consciousness in things. And united to the eternal idea of generation, he perceived the congenital idea which in remotest time seems to have sprung from it — that life is sin and must be atoned for by prayer. Evelyn’s interpretation revealed his deepest ideas to himself, and at last he seemed to stand at the heart of life.
Suddenly his rapture was broken through; the singer had stopped the orchestra.
“You have cut some of the music, I see,” she said, addressing the conductor.
“Only the usual cut, Miss Innes.”
“About twenty pages, I should think.”
The conductor counted them.
“Eighteen.”
“Miss Innes, that cut has been accepted everywhere — Munich, Berlin, Wiesbaden — everywhere except Bayreuth.”
“But, Mr. Hermann Goetze, my agreement with you is that the operas I sing in are to be performed in their entirety.”
“In their entirety; that is to say, well — taken literally, I suppose — that the phrase ‘In their entirety’ could be held to mean without cuts; but surely, regarding this particular cut — I may say that I spoke to Sir Owen about it, and he agreed with me that it was impossible to get people into the theatre in London before half-past seven.”
“But, Mr. Hermann Goetze, your agreement is with me, not with Sir Owen Asher.”
“Quite so, Miss Innes, but—”
“If people don’t care sufficiently for art to dine half-an-hour earlier, they had better stay away.”
“But you see, Miss Innes, you’re not in the first act; there are the other artistes to consider. The ‘Venusberg’ will be sung to empty benches if you insist.”
It seemed for a moment as if Mr. Hermann Goetze was going to have his way; and Ulick, while praying that she might remain firm, recognised how adroitly Hermann Goetze had contrived to place her in a false position regarding her fellow artistes.
“I am quite willing to throw up the part; I can only sing the opera as it is written.”
The conductor suggested a less decisive cut to Evelyn, and Mr. Hermann Goetze walked up and down the stage, overtaken by toothache. His agony was so complete that Evelyn’s harshness yielded. She went to him, and, her hand laid commiseratingly on his arm, she begged him to go at once to the dentist.
Then some of the musicians said that they could hardly read the music, so effectually had they scratched it out.
“If the musicians cannot play the music, we had better go home,” said Evelyn.
“But the opera is announced for to-morrow night,” Mr. Hermann Goetze replied dolefully.
Mr. Wheeler suggested that they might go on with the rehearsal; the cut could be discussed afterwards. Groups formed, everyone had a different opinion. At last the conductor took up his stick and cried, “Number 105, please.”
“They are going back,” thought Ulick; “she held her ground capitally. She has more strength of character than I thought. But Hermann Goetze has upset her; she won’t be able to sing.”
And it was as he expected; she could not recapture her lost inspiration; mood, Ulick could see, was the foundation and the keystone of her art.
“No,” she said, “I sang it horribly, I am all out of sorts, I don’t feel what I am singing, and when the mood is not upon me, I am atrocious. What annoyed me was his attributing such s
elfishness to me, and such vulgar selfishness, too—”
“However, you had your way about the cut.”
“Yes, they’ll have to sing the whole of the finale. But I am sorry about his tooth; I know that it is dreadful pain.”
Ulick told an amusing story how he had once called on Hermann Goetze to ask if he had read the book of his opera.
“He’d just gone into an adjoining room to fetch a clothes-brush — he had taken off his coat to brush it — but the moment he saw me, he whipped out his handkerchief and said that he must go to the dentist.”
“And when I asked him to engage Helbrun to sing Brangäne, and give her eighty pounds a week if she wouldn’t sing it for less, he whipped out his handkerchief as you say, and asked me if I knew a dentist.”
“The idea of Wagner without cuts always brings on a violent attack,” and Ulick imitated so well the expression of agony that had come into the manager’s face that Evelyn exploded with laughter. She begged Ulick to desist.
“I shan’t be able to sing at all. But I have not told you of my make up. I don’t look at all pretty; the ugly curls I wear come from an old German print, and the staid, modest gown. But it is very provoking; I was singing well till that fiend began to argue. Don’t make me laugh again.”
He became very grave.
“I can only think of the joy you gave me.”
His praise brightened her face, and she listened.
“I cannot tell you now what I feel; perhaps I shall never find words to express what I feel about your Elizabeth. I shall be writing about it next week, and shall have to try.”
“Do tell me now. You liked it better than my Margaret?”
Ulick shrugged his shoulders contemptuously, and they looked in each other’s eyes, and could hardly speak, so extraordinary was their recognition of each other; it was so intense that they could hardly help laughing, so strange it seemed that they should never have met before, or should have been separated for such a long time. It really seemed to them as if they had known each other from all eternity.
“How can you act Elizabeth, she is so different from what you are?”
“Is she?”
Her pale blue eyes seemed to open a little wider, and she looked at him searchingly. He could not keep back the words that rose to his tongue.
“You mean that your dead life now lives in Elizabeth.”
“Yes, I suppose that that is it.”
They asked each other whether any part of one’s nature is ever really dead.
A few moments after the pilgrims were heard singing, and Evelyn would have to go on the stage. She pressed her hands against her forehead, ridding herself by an effort of will of her present individuality. The strenuous chant of the pilgrims grew louder, the procession approached, and as it passed across the stage Elizabeth sought for Tannhäuser, but he was not among them. So her last earthly hope has perished, and she throws herself on her knees at the foot of the wayside cross. And it was the anguish of her soul that called forth that high note, a G repeated three times; and it seemed to Ulick that she seemed to throw herself upon that note, that reiterated note, as if she would reach God’s ears with it and force him to listen to her. In the religious, almost Gregorian, strain her voice was pure as a little child, but when she spoke of her renunciation and the music grew more chromatic, her voice filled with colour — her sex appeared in it; and when the music returned to the peace of the religious strain, her voice grew blanched and faded like a nun’s voice. Henceforth her life will be lived beyond this world, and as she walked up the stage, the flutes and clarionets seemed to lead her straight to God; they seemed to depict a narrow, shining path, shining and ascending till it disappeared amid the light of the stars.
“Well,” she said, “did I sing it to your satisfaction?”
“You’re an astonishing artiste.”
“No, that’s just what I am not. I go on the stage and act; I couldn’t tell you how I do it; I am conscious of no rule.”
“And the music?”
“The music the same. I have often been told that I might act Shakespeare, but without music I could not express myself. Words without music would seem barren; I never try to sing, I try to express myself. But you’ll see, my father won’t think much of my singing. He’ll compare me to mother, and always to my disadvantage. I cannot phrase like her.”
“But you can; your phrasing is perfection. It is the very emotion—”
“Father won’t think so; if he only thought well of my singing he would forgive me.”
“How unaffected you are; in hearing you speak one hears your very soul.”
“Do you? But tell me, is he very incensed? Shall I meet a face of stone?”
“He is incensed, no doubt, but he must forgive you. But every day’s delay will make it more difficult.”
“I know, I know.”
“You cannot go to-morrow?”
“Why not?”
“To-morrow you sing this opera. Go on Saturday; you’ll be sure to find him on Saturday afternoon. He has a rehearsal in the morning and will be at home about four in the afternoon.”
As they walked through the scenery she said, “You’ll come to see me,” and she reminded him of his promise to go through the Isolde music with her.
“Mind, you have promised,” she said as she got into her carriage.
“You’ll not forget Saturday afternoon,” he said as he shook hands.
She nodded and put up her umbrella, for it was beginning to rain.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
EVELYN FOUND OWEN waiting for her. As soon as she came into the room he said, “Well, have you seen your father?”
She was not expecting him, and it was disagreeable to admit that she had not been to Dulwich. So she said that she had thought to find her father at St. Joseph’s.
“But how did you know he was not at home if you did not go to Dulwich?”
“My gracious, Owen, how you do question me! Now, perhaps you would like to know which of the priests told me.”
She walked to the window and stood with her left hand in the pocket of her jacket, and he feared that the irritation he had involuntarily caused her would interfere with his projects for the afternoon. There passed in his eyes that look of absorption in an object which marks the end of a long love affair — a look charged with remembrance, and wistful as an autumn day.
The earth has grown weary of the sun and turns herself into the shadow, eager for rest. The sun has been too ardent a lover. But the gaze of the sun upon the receding earth is fonder than his look when she raised herself to his bright face. So in Owen’s autumn-haunted eyes there was dread of the chances which he knew were accumulating against him — enemies, he divined, were gathering in the background; and how he might guard her, keep her for himself, became a daily inquisition. Nothing had happened to lead him to think that his possession was endangered, his fear proceeded from an instinct, which he could not subdue, that she was gliding from him; he wrestled with the intangible, and, striving to subordinate instinct to reason, he often refrained from kissing her; he imitated the indifference which in other times he could not dissimulate when the women who had really loved him besought him with tears. But there was no long gain-saying of the delight of telling her that he loved her, and when his aching heart forced him to question her regarding the truth of her feelings towards him, she merely told him that she loved him as much as ever, and the answer, instead of being a relief, was additional fuel upon the torturing flame of his uncertainty.
Ever since their rupture and reconciliation in Florence, their relations had been so uncertain that Owen often wondered if he were her lover. Whether the reason for these periods of restraint was virtue or indifference he could never be quite sure. He believed that she always retained her conscience, but he could not forget that her love had once been sufficient compensation for what she suffered from it. “The stage has not altered her,” he thought, “time has but nourished her idiosyncrasies.” He had been hop
ing for one of her sudden and violent returnings to her former self, but such thing would not happen to-day, and hardly knowing what reply to make, he asked if she were free to come to look at some furniture. She mentioned several engagements, adding that he had made her too many presents already.
She spoke of the rehearsal at considerable length, omitting, somehow, to speak of Ulick, and after lunch she seemed restless and proposed to go out at once.
As they drove off to see the Sheraton sideboard, he asked her if she had seen Ulick Dean. To her great annoyance she said she had not, and this falsehood spoilt her afternoon for her. She could not discover why she had told this lie. The memory rankled in her and continued to take her unaware. She was tempted to confess the truth to Owen; the very words she thought she should use rose up in her mind several times. “I told you a lie. I don’t know why I did, for there was absolutely no reason why I should have said that I had not seen Ulick Dean.” On Saturday the annoyance which this lie had caused in her was as keen as ever: and it was not until she had got into her carriage and was driving to Dulwich that her consciousness of it died in the importance of her interview with her father.
