"But—when can I see you without disturbing you?"
"The fact is, I am always busy when I am at home."
"Are you really always so hard at work?"
"Yes, always, unless I am interrupted."
"Oh, I am so sorry to trouble you! But I will only detain you a very few minutes."
"Well, well, sir, that's long enough to kill a man, not to mention an idea! But as you are here, pray proceed."
This is a sample of what occurs daily; and I speak here of artists as a general class. But there is a certain category of artists who have quite special advantages in this line. I can speak out of my own experience, for I refer to musicians. A painter or a sculptor can easily protect his working hours by mercilessly closing his door. He can plead a sitting model, or, if the worst comes to the worst, he can wield the brush or chisel even in the presence of visitors. But the musician? His case is quite different. As his work can be done in daylight, people take his evenings to provide amusement for their guests; and as he can work at night, they come and waste and fritter away his days without the slightest scruple. "And besides," they say, "musical composition is such an easy thing! It is not a matter of labour; it comes of itself, an inspiration!"
My readers cannot have any conception of the innumerable and indiscreet requests to which a musician is daily exposed—the crowds of young pianists, violinists, vocalists, composers, poets (lyric or otherwise), teachers and inventors of various methods, systems and theories, editors of periodicals, pestering you to take their publications; not to mention the requests for autographs, photographs—the albums and the fans, and what not, sent for your signature. It all amounts to a perfect nightmare, and the musician is turned into a sort of national property to which the public has right of access at any and every hour. To be brief, our houses are not in the street any more; the street is in our houses. Our whole life is devoured by idlers, inquisitive folk, loungers who are bored with themselves, and even by reporters of all sorts, who force their way into our homes, to inform the public not only as to our private conversation, but as to the colour of our dressing-gowns and the cut of our working-jackets!
Well! That is all wrong, and unhealthy. The precious delicacy, the modesty of feeling, which only lives by quiet contemplation, grows paler and more wilted, day by day, in that unceasing rout, from which the artist brings back nought but a superficial, breathless, feverish activity, tossing convulsively among the ruins of the intellectual balance he has lost for ever.
Farewell to those hours of calm and luminous peace, wherein alone a man can see and hear the workings of his own soul! The noble sanctuary of thought and of emotion, gradually forsaken for the excitements of the outer world, will soon be nothing but a dark and gloomy dungeon, wherein the spirit that knows not how to live in silence must die of weariness.