“So I thought; and still greater when I caused a pupil of mine, the young Italian Mengotti, to dispute the palm of song with the enchantress Faustina[4]—aye, to bear it away upon more than one occasion. All this you know, and how I returned to London upon the invitation of amateurs in Italian music.”
“Where you rivaled Händel!” said Haydn, enthusiastically.
“Ah, that was the turning point in my destiny. Farinelli, the famous singer, gloried in being my scholar. He turned all his splendid powers to the effort of assuring the triumph of my compositions. I could have borne that these should fail in commanding popularity; I could have borne the defeat by which Händel was elevated at my expense to an idol shrine among the English—but it grieved me to see that Farinelli’s style, so really perfect in its way, was unappreciated by the most distinguished connoisseurs. I did justice to the strength and grandeur of my rival; should he not have acknowledged the grace, finish and sweetness of Italian song? But he despised Farinelli, and his friends made caricatures of him.”
“Händel, with all his greatness, had no versatility,” observed Haydn.
“I wished to attempt another style, for this repulse had somewhat cooled my zeal for the theatre. I set myself to cultivate what was new—what was not born with me. I published my sonatas for the violin—the connoisseurs applauded, and I was encouraged to hope I could face my rival on his own ground. I composed sacred music——”
“And that,” interrupted his auditor, “will live—pardon me for saying so—when your theatrical compositions have ceased to enjoy unrivaled popularity.”
“When they are forgotten, say rather—for such, I feel, will be their fate. My sacred compositions may survive and carry my name to posterity—for taste in such things is less mutable than in the opera. After all, the monks may claim me,” and he smiled pensively.[5] “You see now, dear Haydn,” he resumed, after a pause, “for what I have lived and labored. I was once renowned and wealthy—what did prosperity bring me? Envy, discontent, rivalship, disappointment! And did art flourish more luxuriantly on such a soil? With me the heavenly plant languished, and would have died but that I had some energy within me to save it. I repine when I look back on those years.”
“You?” repeated Haydn, surprised.
“Would you know to what period I can look back with self-approbation, with thankfulness? To the toil of my early years; to the struggle after an ideal of greatness, goodness and beauty; to the self-forgetfulness that saw only the glorious goal far, far before me; to the undismayed resolve that sought only its attainment. Or to a time still later, when the visions of manhood’s impure and selfish ambition had faded away; when the soul had shaken off some of her fetters, and roused herself to a perception of the eternal, the perfect, the divine; when I became conscious of the delusive vanity of earthly hopes and earthly excellence, but at the same time awakened to the revelation of that which cannot die!
“You see me now, seventy-three years old, and too poor to command even a shelter for the few days that yet remain to me in this world. I have lost the splendid fame I once possessed; I have lost the riches that were mine; I have lost the power to win even a competence by my own labors—but I have not lost my passion for our glorious music, nor enjoyment of the reward, more precious than gold, she bestows on her votaries; nor my confidence in Heaven. And you, at twenty-seven, you—more greatly endowed—to whom the world is open—you despair! Are you worthy to succeed, O man of little faith?”