My Memoirs. Marguerite Steinheil

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СКАЧАТЬ do you care for a good cigar?"

      "Rather," said the young painter, who although born in the country had spent several years in Montmartre.

      "Well, then, my lad, take this box with you." And Bonnat dismissed him in the blunt manner which he assumed whenever he did a good action.

      I saw the young man a few days later, before his departure for the country, where he was to become a prosperous farmer, though he never gave up painting, and he told me, with big tears in his eyes, that he had found in the box, besides the cigars, ten hundred-franc notes, and Bonnat's card with these words, "Good Luck."

      "How shall I thank M. Bonnat," he kept repeating, after I had filled him with tea and cakes so that he might recover.

      "I'll tell you," I replied. "By, not thanking him at all. He loathes gratitude."

      Massenet, the composer of Manon, Thaïs, Sapho, Werther, and so many other delightful operas, did me, for many years, the great honour of calling himself my "respectful, obedient, and faithful accompanist." I always found him whimsical, enthusiastic, mischievous, and fond of jokes. As he entered my salon, at some crowded reception, he would wave aside the valet about to announce his name, and shout in a stentorian voice: "Massenet!"... Once, he added, "Grand officer of the legion of honour, author of a score of operas, member of several academies!" And as soon as he had greeted me and shaken hands with a few friends, he started his favourite sport: pun-making. He had a knack of ending the most serious arguments, even about music, with a bon mot, and I sincerely believe that he enjoyed the successes of his witticisms quite as much as the success of his operas. He said himself: "I am a composer, that's true and I can't help it, but at the same time I love fun and youth, and boys of sixty are incorrigible."

      Once, some foreigners called on me, and Massenet begged me to mumble his name when I should introduce him. A little later, he was talking music to the newcomers, and in time mentioned Massenet, whose music he lightly disparaged, with the result that they agreed with him, as he seemed to know all about music, and even went further and declared Massenet's music quite unbearable. Thereupon the composer sat at the piano and played some of his own music as he alone could play it, and Massenet's critics went into ecstasies. "Ah, that's what one may call real music," they said. "Who wrote it?"

      "A friend of mine," Massenet replied airily, and he played again, saying when he had concluded, "That was my own."

      "It's perfectly sweet. You ought to have your music printed."

      "I occasionally do."

      "Really! Would you mind repeating your name, we didn't quite catch it!"

      "Massenet," and with infinite good grace the composer handed his card, and left the room in order to have his laugh outside.

      His letters were most amusing. They were interspersed with bars of music and "sketches" to emphasise or illustrate his meaning. And they invariably contained some welcome remark about his work: "I have just left the Opera Comique. I am quite done up, but the interpretation at this rehearsal was splendid; singers, orchestra, everything. And Calvé! She's divine.... Ah! The fourth act, you will see what she makes of it!..." But long before his letters reached me, Massenet came himself, although "done up," and played to me that fourth act, and made me sing it... under the eyes of my mother and of Marthe, wrapped in ecstasy! Massenet worshipped my daughter and always perched the darling on the top of the piano, where he played.

      In order that Marthe might accompany me, he had the charming idea of composing a few songs for me, the accompaniments of which were very simple and easy and without octaves, which were as yet beyond her reach. On the day when she played the first of these "Do not give thy heart," Massenet indulged in an orgy of puns and jokes, which was a sign of perfect contentment.

      François Coppée, an old comrade of my husband's and one of my "faithful," as he called himself, lived close to us and often came in to have a chat, to look at the flowers in my "winter garden" or to listen to music.

      One day, when Reyer, the composer of Sigurd was present, he remarked that music was not only the most sociological and popular of arts, it was also the easiest. "I could not play a chord, but I feel sure that it is easier to express one's self in music than in written words...."

      Reyer decreed: "It is quite as difficult to frame a melody as to frame a sonnet." But Coppée refused to believe it, and going to the piano, he struck a note mightily. "That's a war-cry," he exclaimed; then touched the same note gently, "And that's melancholy," and playing it once more as softly as possible, "And that's reverie: Music is above all wonderful because it is so simple!" It was a mere sally on his part, and Reyer laughed heartily.

      Coppée was kind, tender-hearted, and sociable, the very type of the popular and sentimental Parnassien. He spoke in an artless manner, as much like a Christian as a poet, and the modesty of this Academicien, this "immortal" loaded with honours, was delightful.

      He found me one evening reading some verses of Heredia. "You are unfaithful to me, dear friend," he said.

      "I like all good poets," I replied, "and this one opens wide horizons to me. He seems very far...."

      "You are right. I merely try to see what is near me," said Coppée with a smile.

      Little Marthe was very proud of the poet, but this did not prevent her from making use of him. She made him gather shells for her, one summer, on a small beach in Normandy, and told him to store them in his large felt hat. It was there that he once took us to a huge rock in a secret hole of which he showed me a large box of cigarettes.

      "The doctor strictly forbids me to smoke," he explained, "and my sister (Coppée was a bachelor and lived with his sister, who was the most devoted person one could well conceive) sees to it that the doctor's instructions are carried out. Therefore, I come here secretly to smoke. Life without tobacco, you know...." Then taking me to the other side of the rock, he pointed to the sand which was strewn with hundreds of cigarette ends, and cheerfully exclaimed: "What a cemetery!"

      Marthe, who was then seven years old, had often heard that Coppée was a great man, and that all which came from a great man was worth keeping. While we walked on, Coppée and I, she gathered all the cigarette ends, hid them, and the next day, put them in a box which she would not let out of her hands. Coppée, later on questioned her about the precious contents of the box.... He believed, as I did, that it contained sea-shells, and he was very much tickled when she opened the box, and in her little fluty voice, declared: "I too want to have a keepsake from you, and I have it!"

      In Paris I often saw Coppée as I passed by the Café des Vosges, his favourite haunt, a few hundred yards away from the Impasse Ronsin. He saluted me, quickly paid the waiter, overtook me, and together we walked to my house, talking of books.

      He himself organised a performance at my villa of his Passant, the charming one-act play which had made him famous when he was twenty-seven, and still a clerk in the Ministry of War.

      During the Dreyfus affair, in which he took a leading part as one of the founders of the Patrie Française League, I saw him less and less. Meeting him one morning in the gardens of the Luxembourg, I asked him why he neglected me.

      "Ah! my friend," he said hesitatingly, "I'd love to call on you as in the past, but the trouble is there are too many Dreyfusards in your salon!"

      By an amusing coincidence, Zola called that very day, but he only remained a little while.

      "To my great СКАЧАТЬ