Part 18 (1/2)

Johnson closes his eyes, sighs, and leans back resignedly.

The others look and listen with interest as the play proceeds.

The other day I read a book by Madame Columbier ent.i.tled, ”Sara Barnum.”

Only a person of worth could draw forth such a fire of hot invective, biting sarcasm and frenzied vituperation as this volume contains. When I closed the volume it was with the feeling that Sara Bernhardt is surely the greatest woman of the age; and I was fully resolved that I must see her play at the first opportunity, no matter what the cost. And as for Madame Columbier, why she isn't so bad, either! The flashes of lightning in her swordplay are highly interesting. The book was born, as all good books, because its mother could not help it. Behind every page and between the lines you see the fevered toss of human emotion and hot ambition--these women were rivals. There were digs and scratches, bandied epithets in falsetto, and sounds like a piccolo played by a man in distress, before all this; and these are not explained, so you have to fill them in with your imagination. But the Bernhardt is the bigger woman of the two. She goes her splendid pace alone, and all the other woman can do is to bombard her with a book.

The excellence of Handel is shown in that he achieved the enmity of some very good men. Read the ”Spectator,” and you will find its pages well peppered with thrusts at ”foreigners,” and sweeping cross-strokes at Italian Opera and all ”bombastic beaters of the air, who smother harmony with bursts of discord in the name of music.”

These battles royal between the kings of art are not so far removed from the battles of the beasts. Rosa Bonheur has pictured a duel to the death between stallions; and that battle of the stags--horn-locked--with the morning sun revealing Death as victor, by Landseer, is familiar to us all. Then Landseer has another picture which he called ”The Monarch,”

showing a splendid stag, solitary and alone, standing on a cliff, overlooking the valley. There is history behind this stag. Before he could command the scene alone, he had to vanquish foes; but in the main, in some way, you feel that most of his battles have been bloodless and he commands by divine right. The Divine Right of a King, if he be a King, has its root in truth.

One mark of the genius of Handel is shown in the fact that he has achieved a split and created a ruction in the Society of Scribblers. He once cut Dean Swift dead at a fas.h.i.+onable gathering--the doughty Dean, who delighted in making men and women alike crawl to him--and this won him the admiration of Colley Cibber, who immortalized the scene in a sonnet. People liked Handel, or they did not, and among the Old Guard who stood by him, let these names, among others, be remembered: Colley Cibber, Gay, Arbuthnot, Pope, Hogarth, Fielding and Smollett.

People who through incapacity are unable to comprehend or appreciate music, are p.r.o.ne to wax facetious over it--the feeble joke is the last resort of the man who does not understand.

The noisy denizens of Grub Street, drinking perdition to that which they can not comprehend, always getting ready to do great things, seem like fussy pigmies beside a giant like Handel. See the fifth act ere the curtain falls on the lives of Oliver Goldsmith, Doctor Johnson, Steele, Addison and Dean Swift (dead at the top, the last), and the others unhappily sent into Night; and then behold George Frederick Handel, in his seventy-fifth year, blind, but with inward vision all aflame, conducting the oratorio of ”Elijah” before an audience of five thousand people!

The life of Handel was packed with work and projects too vast for one man to realize. That he deferred to the London populace and wrote down to them at first, is true; but the greatness of the man is seen in this--he never deceived himself. He knew just what he was doing, and in his heart was ever a shrine to the Ideal, and upon this altar the fires never died.

Handel was a man of affairs as well as a musician, and if he had loved money more than Art, he could have withdrawn from the fray at thirty years of age, pa.s.sing rich.

Three times in his life he risked all in the production of Grand Opera, and once saw a sum equal to fifty thousand dollars disappear in a week, through the treachery of Italian artists who were pledged to help him.

At great expense and trouble he had gone abroad and searched Europe for talent, and, regardless of outlay, had brought singers and performers across the sea to England. In several notable instances these singers had, in a short time, been bought up by rivals, and had turned upon their benefactor.

But Handel was not crushed by these things. He was philosopher enough to know that ingrat.i.tude is often the portion of the man who does well, and a fight with a fox you have warmed into life is ever imminent. At fifty-five, a bankrupt, he makes terms with his creditors and in a few years pays off every s.h.i.+lling with interest, and celebrates the event by the production of ”Saul,” the ”Dead March” from which will never die.

The man had been gaining ground, making head, and at the same time educating the taste of the English people. But still they lagged behind, and when the oratorio of ”Joshua” was performed, the Master decided he would present his next and best piece outside of England. Jealousy, a dangerous weapon, has its use in the diplomatic world.

Handel set out for Dublin with a hundred musicians, there to present the ”Messiah,” written for and dedicated to the Irish people. The oratorio had been turned off in just twenty-one days, in one of those t.i.tanic bursts of power, of which this man was capable. Its production was a feat worthy of the Frohmans at their best. The performance was to be for charity--to give freedom to those languis.h.i.+ng in debtors' prisons at Dublin. What finer than that the ”Messiah” should give deliverance?

The Irish heart was touched. A fierce scramble ensued for seats, precedence being emphasized in several cases with blackthorns deftly wielded. The price of seats was a guinea each. Handel's carriage was drawn through the streets by two hundred students. He was crowned with shamrock, and given the freedom of the city in a gold box. Freedom even then, in Ireland, was a word to conjure with. Long before the performance, notices that no more tickets would be sold were posted. The doors of the Debtors' Prison were thrown open, and the prisoners given seats so they could hear the music--thus overdoing the matter in true Irish style.

The performance was the supreme crowning event in the life of Handel up to that time.

Couriers were dispatched to London to convey the news of Handel's great triumph to the newspapers; bulletins were posted at the clubs--the infection caught! On the return of the master a welcome was given him such as he had never before known--Dublin should not outdo London! When the ”Messiah” was given in London, the scene of furore in Dublin was repeated. The wild tumult at times drowned the orchestra, and when the ”Hallelujah Chorus” was sung, the audience arose as one man and joined in the song of praise. And from that day the custom has continued: whenever in England the ”Messiah” is given, the audience arises and sings in the ”Chorus,” as its privilege and right. The proceeds of the first performance of the ”Messiah” in England were given to charity, as in Dublin. This act, with the splendor of the work, subdued the last lingering touch of obdurate criticism. The man was canonized by popular acclaim. Many of his concerts were now for charity--”The Foundlings'

Home,” ”The Seamen's Fund,” ”Home for the Aged,” hospitals and imprisoned debtors--all came in for their share.

Handel never married. That remark of Dean Swift's, ”I admire Handel--princ.i.p.ally because he conceals his petticoat peccadilloes with such perfection,” does not go. Handel considered himself a priest of art, and his pa.s.sion spent itself in his work.

The closing years of his life were a time of peace and honor. His bark, after a fitful voyage, had glided into safe and peaceful waters. The calamity of blindness did not much depress him--”What matters it so long as I can hear?” he said. And good it is to know that the capacity to listen and enjoy, to think and feel, to sympathize and love--to live his Ideals--were his, even to the night of his pa.s.sing Hence.

[Ill.u.s.tration: GIUSEPPE VERDI]

GIUSEPPE VERDI