Volume I Part 5 (1/2)
”Everything went swimmingly till we got to the last stage from the Residenz, but there my horse was seized with the remarkable idea that he ought to go home to his stable. A conviction that severe measures are seldom effectual in such conjunctures induced me to try every description of mild persuasion that I could think of. The perverse animal was proof against all my gentle remonstrances. I wanted to go forward; he wanted to go back. All that I could accomplish in the circ.u.mstances was that, instead of retrograding, he kept describing circles. Teresina leant out of the carriage, laughing most heartily; whilst Lauretta put her hands before her eyes and screamed, as if I were in the utmost danger. I jammed my spurs into the brute's sides, and, ere I could say Jack Robinson, found myself on the broad of my back on the turnpike road, with the horse standing over me, his long neck stretched out, surveying me with an expression of calm derision.
”'I could not get up till the driver got off and helped me. Lauretta, too, got out, and was weeping and screaming. I had twisted one of my feet, and couldn't ride any further. What was to be done? The horse was made fast to the back of the carriage, and I had to squeeze myself inside, as best I could. Just picture to yourself two well-grown young women, a fat maid, a couple of dogs, a dozen or so of baskets, band-boxes, etc., and me in addition, squeezed up in a little two-seated phaeton! Think of Lauretta's lamentations about the want of room; the dogs' yapping; the Neapolitan's chattering, and the horrible pain of my foot, and you will have some idea what a charming position I was in.
Teresina declared she could bear it no longer; the driver pulled up, and with one bound she was out of the carriage. She loosed my horse, got on his back, and trotted and curvetted down the road before us. She certainly looked splendid; the grace and distinction which she possessed in an eminent degree were more especially conspicuous on horseback. She made us hand her out her guitar, and, slinging her bridle over her left arm, she sang Spanish ballads as she rode along, striking handfuls of chords in accompaniment. Her silk dress fluttered in s.h.i.+mmering folds, and the white plumes in her hat nodded and quivered, like airy sprites, in time to the music. Her whole effect was romantic beyond expression, and I could not take my eyes away from her; although Lauretta called her absurd, and said she was a silly, forward girl, and had better take care she didn't meet with an accident.
However, the horse seemed to have altered his tactics--or perhaps he preferred the lady-singer to the Paladin; at all events, it was not till we were close to the gates of the Residenz that Teresina clambered back into the carriage again.
”'Imagine me now deliciously up to my eyes in concerts, operas, and music of every description, pa.s.sing my days and hours at the piano, whilst arias, duets, and I don't know all what, are being studied and rehea.r.s.ed. From the total change in my outward man you gather that I am permeated and inspired by a spirit of might. All the provincial bashfulness is gone. I sit at the piano, a _maestro_, with the score before me, conducting my donna's _scenas_. My whole soul and existence is centred in melody. With the utmost contempt for counterpoint, I write quant.i.ties of _canzonettas_ and _arias_, which Lauretta sings--only in private, however. Why won't she ever sing anything of mine at a concert? I can't make this out. Teresina sometimes dawns on my memory, curvetting with her lyre on her charger, like some incarnation of music; and, spite of myself, I write loftier and more serious strains when I think of this. Lauretta, no doubt, sports and plays with the notes like some fairy-queen. What does she ever attempt in which she does not succeed? Teresina never attempts a _roulade_; a simple _appoggiatura_ or so, in the antique style, is the utmost that she ventures upon; but those long, sustained notes of hers s.h.i.+ne through the dim background, and wonderful spirits arise, and gaze, with their earnest eyes, deep into the breast. I don't know why mine was so long before it opened to them.
”'The sisters' benefit-concert came off at length. Lauretta was singing a great _scena_ of Anfossi's. I was, of course, at the piano as usual.
We had arrived at her final ”pause,” where her grand _cadenza ad libitum_ had to come in. It was a question of showing what she really _could_ do. Nightingale trills went warbling up and down; then came long holding-notes; then all kinds of florid pa.s.sages--a regular _solfeggio_; even _I_ thought the affair was being kept up too long.
Suddenly I felt a breath. Teresina was standing close behind me; Lauretta was just pulling herself together to begin her long, swelling harmonica shake, which was to lead back to the _a-tempo_. Some demon took possession of me. I crashed down the chord of the dominant with both hands; the orchestra followed me; and there was an end of Lauretta's _trillo_, just at the supreme moment when it ought to have set the audience _in furore_.
”'Lauretta, with a glare of fury at me, which went through me like a two-edged sword, tore her music in pieces, and sent it flying about my ears; then rushed away like a mad creature, through the orchestra, into the ante-room. As soon as the _tutti_ was finished, I hastened after her. She was sobbing and raving. ”Don't come near me, you malignant fiend!” she screamed: ”you have blasted my career for ever; how can I ever look an audience in the face again? You have robbed me of my name, and fame, and, oh, of my _trillo_! Out of my sight;” she made a rush at me, but I slipped deftly out of the door. During the _concerto_--which somebody or other played--Teresina and the Kapellmeister succeeded in so far pacifying her as to induce her to appear again--but not with me at the piano--and in the concluding duet, which the sisters sung, Lauretta did actually introduce the harmonica shake, was tremendously applauded, and got into the most delightful temper imaginable.
”'I, however, couldn't get over the style in which I had been treated before so many strangers; and I had quite made up my mind to be off back to my native town again the following morning. In fact I was packing up, when Teresina came into my room. When she saw what was going on, she was thunderstruck. ”_You_ going to leave us?” she cried.
I said that after the way in which Lauretta had behaved to me, I could not possibly stay.
”'”Then the hasty, petulant outburst of a foolish girl, which she is heartily ashamed of and sorry for, is going to drive you away; where else could you carry on your artistic life so happily? It rests entirely with you to cure Lauretta of those tempers of hers. You are too good to her, and let her have her own way far too much. You have too high an opinion of her altogether. She has a very fair voice, and an enormous compa.s.s, no doubt. But all those _fioriture_, those everlasting scales and pa.s.sages, and nightingale trills of hers, what are they but dazzling tricks, more like what an acrobat does on the tight-rope than anything else? Can such things possibly touch the heart? The harmonica shake, which you wouldn't let her bring in, is a thing which I detest! it makes me feel quite ill. Then all that clambering up among the ledger-line notes, isn't it a mere, unnatural forcing of the proper voice--the real voice--the only voice that touches the listener? What I admire are the middle and lower registers.
A tone which goes to the heart, a genuine _portamento di voce_, I prefer to everything else. None of those meaningless _embellimenti_--a firm, steady, full utterance of the note--something like decision and accuracy of intonation; that is real singing, and that is how I sing myself. If you can't bear Lauretta longer, don't forget that there is Teresina, who is your devoted friend: and you can be my _maestro_ and composer quite in your own special style. Don't be vexed with me, but all your florid _canzonettas_ and _arias_ are nothing in comparison with _the_ one.”
”'Teresina sang, in her rich pathetic tones, a simple _canzone_ in church style which I had written a few days before. Never could I have imagined that it could ever possibly have sounded like that. Tears of rapture rolled down my cheeks: I seized her hand, and pressed it to my lips a thousand times: I vowed that nothing on earth should ever part us.
”'Lauretta looked upon my alliance with Teresina with angry jealousy, which she concealed as best she could. I was indispensable to her at the time; because, clever as her singing was, she couldn't learn anything new without a.s.sistance. She was a wretched hand at reading, and extremely shaky over her time. Teresina could read everything at sight, and the accuracy of her time was incomparable. Lauretta's tempers and caprices never came out in such full force as when she was being accompanied. The accompaniment never pleased her. She looked upon it in the light of a necessary evil, she wanted the piano to be barely audible, always _pianissimo_. She was always dragging and altering the time, every bar different, just as she happened to take it in her head at the moment. I set to work to resist this firmly. I combatted those evil habits of hers; I showed her that there must be a certain energy about an accompaniment, that breadth of phrasing was one thing, and meaningless dragging quite another. Teresina backed me up staunchly. I gave up writing everything but the church style, and gave all the solos to the contralto voice. Teresina dragooned me pretty smartly, too; but I didn't mind that. She knew more than Lauretta, and I thought she had more feeling for German music.
”'When we were in a certain little town in the south of Germany, we met with an Italian tenor on his way from Milan to Vienna. My ladies were charmed to meet with a fellow-countryman. He was continually with them.
Teresina was the one whom he chiefly devoted himself to, and, to my no small disgust, I found myself quite playing second fiddle. One morning, as I was just going into their room, with a score under my arm, I heard an animated conversation going on between my ladies and the tenor. My own name struck my ear, and I listened with might and main. I knew enough Italian to catch every word that was said. Lauretta was relating the terrible story of the concert when I cut her out of her shake by striking my chord too soon.
”'”_Asino tedesco!_” cried the tenor. I felt inclined to go and chuck the vapouring stage-hero out of the window; but I restrained myself.
Lauretta went on to say that she would have got rid of me on the spot, but that I had implored her to let me stay, and she had done so, out of compa.s.sion, as I was going to take singing-lessons from her. Teresina confirmed this, to my no small amazement. ”He is a nice boy, enough,”
she added. ”He is in love with _me_ just now, and writes all his solos for the contralto. There is a certain amount of talent in him, if he could get rid of the stiffness and awkwardness which all Germans have.
I am in hopes I may make a composer of him who may write some good things for the contralto: there is so little written for it that is worth very much. He is dreadfully wearisome with his everlasting sighings and devotion, and torments me fearfully with his compositions, which are poor enough as yet.”
”'”Thank goodness, I am quit of him,” cried Lauretta, ”You know, Teresina, how he used to torture me with his _arias_ and _duettos_,”
and she began a duet of mine, which she had highly praised formerly.
Teresina took the second voice, and they both caricatured me most unmercifully. The tenor laughed till the room re-echoed. I felt a stream of icy water running down my back, my mind was thoroughly made up. I slipped back to my own room as quietly as I could. Its windows looked out into the side-street--the post-office was just over the way, and the Bamberg coach was drawing up to take in the mail-bags.
The pa.s.sengers were collecting at the gate, but I had still the best part of an hour before me. I got my things together as quickly as I could--magnanimously paid the whole of the hotel bill, and was off to the coach. As I went along the High Street, I saw my ladies looking out at the window, with the tenor, at the sound of the horn. But I kept well out of sight in the background, and pictured to myself, with deep delight, the crus.h.i.+ng effect of the scathing letter which I had left for them.
”'Here Theodore slowly savoured, with intense gusto, the last drops of the glowing Eleatic which Edward had poured out for him.
”'”I shouldn't have expected Teresina to have behaved as she did,” said Edward, opening a fresh bottle, and shaking away the drop or two of oil on the surface like one accustomed to that operation. ”I can't forget the pretty picture of her caracoling along on horseback, singing Spanish songs.”
”'That was her culminating point,' said Theodore. 'I remember as distinctly as possible the impression that made upon me. I forgot the pain of my foot. She looked like some creature of a higher sphere. A moment of that sort makes a tremendous impression upon one sometimes.
Things sometimes put on a form, in an instant, which no lapse of time can change. If ever, since then, I have been unusually happy in the subject of some bold, spirited _romanza_, you may be sure I had that scene, and Teresina, vividly before my mind.'
”'”We mustn't forget the clever Lauretta, either,” said Edward. ”I vote that we let bygones be bygones, and drink to both the sisters.” Which they did.