by George Moore
He died a year or two later, and the café is no longer as attractive as it was when all the actors came down from the theatre to eat their supper there. Klafsky was my first Brünnhilde; when she died Gulbranson took her place, and the moment she came into the cafe all eyes went towards her, and I may say all hearts, for very soon a beautiful smile would light up a round, rosy, very ordinary face, suffusing it, transforming a plain woman into one to whom one’s heart goes instinctively, convinced that all that is necessary to be happy is to be with her.
VIII
WE TAKE TICKETS for a cycle, a Ring, and as many Parsifals as we have appetite for, and when the last performance is over the railway-station is crowded; no longer with the Bohemianism of London and Paris, but with the snobbery (I use the word in its French sense) of both capitals. The trolleys are piled with aristocratic luggage, and the porters are followed by anxious valets; ladies in long, fashionable dust-cloaks are beset by maids with jewel-cases in their hands. Among this titled crowd one can still pick out the student (the professional musician still goes to Bayreuth) and those who really love music, and who go to Bayreuth for the art of the Master — like our friends, the politician and his wife and daughter.
Between the acts of the Götterdämmerung we had heard arrangements being made to be present at other music festivals. It seemed that a considerable part of the audience was going to Munich to hear Mozart. For the last day or two everybody seemed to be muttering Cosi fan Tutti, an opera never given in England. On a former occasion Edward and I had gone to Munich, but we had not heard it; and I would have preferred to follow Mozart, but we were going in a different direction, in quest of other music — northward, a long and tedious journey. For Edward had decided that the revival of drama which the success of The Heather Field had started in Ireland must be accompanied by a revival of all the arts — painting, sculpture, and music. For landscape and portrait-painting he thought he could rely on Dermod O’Brien, who had decided to come to Ireland. A number of chapels had been spoilt by German stained glass, but Miss Purser had promised to engage a man whose father had been intimately connected with the Pre-Raphaelite movement in England, and under her direction ecclesiastical art would flourish again in Ireland. John Hughes would revive Donatello and Edward Palestrina. He told me that Archbishop Walsh had been approached, and that he thought he would be able to persuade him to accept a donation of ten thousand pounds to establish a choir in the cathedral upon the strict understanding, of course, that the choir was only to sing Vittoria, Palestrina, Orlando di Lasso, Francesca de Près, and the other writers, bearing equally picturesque names, who had, if I may borrow a phrase from Evelyn Innes, gravitated round the great Roman composer.
It seemed to me that the analogy he drew between the Italian Renaissance and the Irish was a false one. The Italians had imported nothing, but had re-created all the arts simultaneously. This view was, however, not acceptable, and in the return journey between Nuremberg and Mainz, Edward pointed out that the Italian Renaissance was not as original as it seemed at first sight. It was indebted largely to antiquity, and its flavour was due to the spirit of the Middle Ages which still lingered in the sixteenth century, and in support of this theory he affirmed that Palestrina had used plain-chant melodies in all his Masses.
Turning them into pattern music, I interjected. If you want religion in music, let your choir sing only plain chant.
Edward feared that the congregation would deem that monotonous, and I said, If concessions are going to be made — , and the conversation dropped, for we were going to a festival of pattern music far away in the North of Germany, to a town called Münster, whither, I venture to say, very few have ever wandered, though it is well known by name, on account of Meyerbeer’s opera Le Prophète. We all know the prayer that the prophet sings at the end of the third act before he enters the town, and the great beauty of the fourth act — the cathedral scene in which John of Leyden refuses to recognise his mother. A great act! It was not the fashion of those times to write fifth acts, and Meyerbeer finished his opera with a couple of songs of no great merit, and the blowing up of the town by John of Leyden, who perishes amid the ruins.
But in history he perished quite differently. After a few weeks of revelry Münster was taken by assault, and John of Leyden and his companions were put into iron cages, in which they could neither stand, nor sit, nor lie, and in them they remained on exhibition, hung up some thirty feet above the pavement on the principal street, for three days, before they were torn to pieces with red-hot hooks, by order of the good Bishop. These cages still hang in the principal street, regarded, no doubt, as objects of great historical interest. That they are, no one will contest, yet one cannot help feeling that they would be better out of sight in a museum, for they certainly inspire hatred of the Roman Church in the heart of every passer-by, and it is hardly going too far to say that to these cages, and to the memories which they evoke, is owing the preservation of all the original aspects of the town, so grey and austere, without a sign anywhere of life, of modern thought or aspiration, without a picture-gallery, without a painter, without a writer, a fitting town, indeed, for a festival of archaic music.
Edward had written to his conductor, the man to whom the revival of Palestrina was to be entrusted, to come over and when we were not in the cathedral — which was not often — we used to spend the time wandering about the grey, calico-coloured streets, Edward admiring the fifteenth-century roofs, of which there are a great many, and the arcades; the conductor and myself thinking how the minutes were bringing us nearer another concert. He was a man of quiet and neutral intelligence, and it would have been pleasant to go away for a walk in the country with him. He would have liked to escape from the patter of this archaic music which he already foresaw it was his fate to teach and conduct till the end of his days. But to slip away between a Gloria and a Credo (my suggestion to him) would have offended his burly task-master and perhaps have lost him his job. He dared not even show for one instant that the music bored him, and I hardly dared either, and resisted Edward with difficulty at the door of the cathedral. The choice lay between a motet by Josquin des Près and The Tale of a Town. The third act needed revision, and I not infrequently took the manuscript away with me and forgot it in the pleasant shade of the avenue that encircles the town; and sometimes I took the manuscript with me to the Zoological Gardens, beguiled there by the finest lion ever known, that is to say, the finest ever seen or imagined by me — an extraordinary, silent and monumental beast that used to lie, his paw tucked in front of him, a gazing-stock for me and a group of children. We moved on subdued by his wonderful presence, majestic, magnificent, forlorn, ashamed before his great, brown, melancholy eyes, full of dreams of the desert of long ago, perhaps of the very day when an Arab held him, a whelp, well above the high, red-pommelled saddle, and the dam was speared and shot by other Arabs in the mêlée that happened amid some loose rocks and brushwood.
The blue sky of Münster, and the dust of Münster, and the silence and the loneliness of Munster, often made me think I should like to enter his cage. It was such a splendid one! — built out into the garden, a little park with two tree-trunks and some rocks, a dome-shaped cage in which the great beast could trot or climb, if he were so disposed, but I never saw him except sunning himself in front of his bars. He seemed as lonely as myself, and I often imagined us twain, side by side, The Tale of a Town in my left hand, while with the right I combed his great, brown mane for him. Which would he resent — the reading or the combing? Speculation on this point amused me, and urged me towards the risk, and perhaps might have induced me to undertake it, if I had not met a fox in the circular avenue. The red, bushy animal came there on a chain, and when his master sat on the other end of the bench on which I was sitting, the fox often hopped up between us, treating me with the politeness due to a visitor, a politeness which was requited next by a cutlet. On cutlets our friendship throve until the end of the week, and had I known German it might have become perm
anent. The fox seemed quite willing, for though well behaved with his master, his affection for me was so spontaneous that I think it would have lasted. The peasant, too, might have been persuaded to sell his fox, and if he refused a sovereign it would be because he did not know its value, or because he would not include the chain. As this point could not be settled without some knowledge of German, I strove to explain to him by signs that he was to remain where he was, until I brought back somebody who could sprechen Deutsch. There was no hope of a passer-by who could speak English — there were no passers-by; the whole population of Munster was in the cathedral. It had been going there all the morning, headed by Edward and his conductor, to hear several Masses by Palestrina, and they had started off again in the afternoon to listen to Orlando di Lasso. Edward had pressed me to accompany them, saying that the opportunity might not occur again to hear a work by that great Fleming; but one concert a day of contrapuntal music was enough for me, and I had pleaded my duty regarding a possible reconstruction of the third act, which I was anxious to submit to him in the evening.
He is in the cathedral, listening, I said, and tired by now of Orlando di Lasso; he will be glad of an excuse to get away.
Orlando was being sung when I arrived, and I listened, forgetful of the fox, and very soon it began to seem to me strange that so beautiful a name should be allied to such ugly music. So I fell to thinking how a theory often goes down before a simple fact. It had been mine this long while that a man’s work proceeds from his name; and still forgetful of the fox, I pondered the question whether Orlando di Lasso was, or was not, a beautiful name, deciding at last that it was an affected name, and therefore not beautiful; whereas Palestrina is naturally beautiful, like his music. Palestrina! There is a sound of strings in the name, and he could not have failed to write beautifully for the strings if he had written for instruments. Palestrina! Strings! Strings! I murmured, seeking Edward, and finding him without much difficulty, so striking is his appearance when he sits listening, his hand to his ear, an old melomaniac, drinking in the music. As soon as my errand was whispered he shook his head, saying that he could not leave just now, for the choir were going to sing another motet by Orlando di Lasso, and when that motet was finished there was one by Nannini, which he would not like to miss.
The peasant will never wait so long, I said many a time as I lingered about the church; and when all the motets were finished, and we returned to the avenue, the peasant and his fox were far away, and there was no means of discovering them. The lion? Well, he is dead now — dead and buried; and that is all I remember of a town which I praise God I shall never see again!
As a recompense for having accompanied him to hear the contrapuntalists, Edward was coming with me to see Rubens. We should not arrive in Antwerp until late that night. Edward lay sleeping opposite; it seemed strange that any one should be able to sleep while on his way to Rubens; and I thought of the picture we were going to see. It seemed extraordinary, inconceivable, impossible that tomorrow I should walk down a street into a cathedral, and find myself face to face with The Descent from the Cross. Edward sleeps, but art keeps me awake.
My thoughts turned to Florence and Stella, whom I had arranged to meet in the cathedral; and to pass the time I very soon began to ask myself which I would retain, if the choice were forced upon me — the immense joy of the picture, or the pleasure of meeting two amiable and charming women? In the ordinary course of my days there could be no hesitation, but Edward had been my sole companion for the last six weeks, and in our journeys abroad he imposed acceptance of this rule upon me — that no acquaintances should be made among the flocks of English and American women that congregate in the Continental hotels. I had always abided by this rule of the road, leaving him when the strain became too great — at Dresden some years before, and some years later again at Munich. Those separations had been effected without difficulty. Edward never complains; only once did he mention that I had broken up our tours, as he would put it, for the pleasure of some abandoned woman; and so in this tour it had been a point of honour with me to allow it, at all costs to my feelings, to run its natural course. As it was to end at Antwerp I was well within my rights in arranging to meet Florence and Stella in the cathedral. I say well within, for my friends did not belong to the class of women to which Edward took special objection — women whose sole morality seemed to him to be to yield to every impulse of the heart. My friends were painters, and of considerable talent, and in Edward’s eyes art redeems sex of much of its unpleasantness. He knew nothing of the meeting, and it did not seem to me worth while to mention it as we walked down the street. It would be stupid to interrupt our emotion by introducing any contentious question. We were going to see Rubens, in what is perhaps his lordliest achievement; and when the cathedral came in sight, I laid my hand suddenly on Edward’s shoulder, stopping him to say:
Edward, isn’t it wonderful that we should this moment be walking down a street to see Rubens? Let us never forget it. Let us try to fix it in our memories now before we enter.
Rubens for the moment blotted out all remembrance of Florence and Stella, but as we wandered round the cathedral, memory of them returned to me, and my heart misgave me, for I was beginning to think of Stella perhaps more than was altogether fair to Florence. To confide such scruples as these to Edward would at once prejudice him against both women, and I wanted him to like them. So, with the intention to deceive, I continued to aestheticise, speaking of the beauty of the drooping body as it slips down the white sheet into the arms of devoted women. The art of Greece, we said, re-arisen in Florence, and carried to Antwerp on the calm, overflowing genius of a Fleming. We contrasted this picture, so restrained and concentrated, with the somewhat gross violence of The Ascent of the Cross, painted immediately on his return from Italy, his first abandonment to his native genius, before he had discovered himself. The Crowning of the Virgin is said to have been repainted in some places. Edward was anxious to know if it were so, but art-criticism is difficult when one is expecting two ladies. Though one knows they will not wilfully disappoint, there is always a danger that something may happen to prevent them from coming. The picture is one of the most enchanting that Rubens ever painted. He seems to have forgotten the theological aspects of the subject, and to have remembered only that much of it which is nearest to his heart — a beautiful woman surrounded by beautiful children — and to have painted with no other intention than to make beautiful fair faces, clouds and pale draperies, seem more beautiful. The ease and grace of his incomparable handicraft held my attention while looking round for Stella, tall and shapely, and Florence, whom Nature has not made less well, but on a smaller scale. At last two backs were perceived in a distant chapel. The moment had therefore come to tell Edward that I had just caught sight of two ladies, acquaintances, artists both of them.
I must go and speak to them. Shall I bring them back and introduce them? They are artists.
Somewhat to my surprise, Edward did not raise any objection to meeting them; on the contrary, he said that it would be interesting to hear them talk about the pictures. He showed himself very affable to both, speaking to Florence about the supposed repainting of The Crowning of the Virgin, and to Stella about the quality of the black behind the Magdalen’s head in The Descent from the Cross. At the door of the cathedral I mentioned that I was lunching with the ladies, and he consented to join us, and when the ladies left us, he made complimentary observations regarding their demeanour and intelligences, asking several questions about their work, and not one about their private lives.
After lunch we went to the exhibition of Van Dyck’s works which was being held at Antwerp that year, and after viewing his monotonous portraits one after the other, the residual impression left on the mind was of a painting lackey, an impersonal mind transcribing an impersonal world. Something less vulgar, more individual, I declared, we should find at Ghent, a small town in Flanders, renowned because of its possession of one of the world’s masterpieces, Van Eyck�
��s Adoration of the Lamb. And we went thither accompanied by Edward, who had not seen the picture. It astonishes the painter as nothing else in the world can, except, perhaps, the miracle that decrees that to flowers their shapes and hues. We visited other towns and saw some fine Memlings; but better than those do I remember the afternoon that I walked with Stella up a long grey platform (Edward, walked with Florence), telling her that I should deem my life worthless if she did not allow me to accompany her to Holland. As I have said, my tour with Edward had been arranged to end at Antwerp, so the change from Edward’s society to that of these ladies would prove beneficial to me, as much for intellectual as for sensuous reasons. I am penetrated through and through by an intelligent, passionate, dreamy interest in sex, going much deeper than the mere rutting instinct; and turn to women as a plant does to the light, as unconsciously, breathing them through every pore, and my writings are but the exhalation that follows the inspiration. I am, in contrast to Edward, an essentially social being, taking pleasure in, and deriving profit from, my fellows. But he is independent of society, and we both suffer from the defects of our qualities. The moments of loneliness that fall upon me at the close of a long day’s work are unknown to him. He has never experienced that spiritual terror which drives me out after dinner in search of somebody to talk to. A book and a cigar (I have never been able to smoke a pipe) are not enough for me, and the hours between nine and midnight are always redoubtable hours. How they are to be whiled away is my problem. I admire and envy Edward’s taste for reading. That bulky man can return to his rooms, even in the height of summer, light half a dozen candles (he does not like a lamp) and sit down behind a lofty screen (draughts give him colds) with a long clay between his teeth and a book on aesthetics in his hand, and read till midnight. And that, night after night, his life going by all the while. It is true that he pays for his contentment. His mind began to harden before he was forty, and I had to warn him of the precipice towards which he was going: One cannot change oneself, he answered. He is glad to see me if I call, but he feels no special need of my society. One day I said: Edward, which would you prefer to spend the evening with — a very clever woman, or a stupid man? After three or four puffs at his pipe he answered: With the stupid man.
