I return to that corner house of the Rue de la Chaussée d'Antin, where the maestro lived. One morning I was there with my cousin, Ernst Jaques, when Rossini's old friend Scitivaux came in.
"There," said Rossini, "there is what I promised you, and I have written all you want to know inside." With that he handed a copy of the "Barbiere" to Scitivaux, who, at the sight of the gift and its precious dedication, broke into raptures of gratitude; I am not sure whether he wept or laughed on the other's shoulder; but I distinctly recollect he was immediately turned out. "Take it, but go," he was ordered; "I don't want you here. Mr. Jaques is just going to play to me. No; you can read that afterwards." A final continental hug, and he and the book were outside. So was I, for I thought it prudent not to await definite instructions, and I was dying to know what was the purport of the exciting inscription.
So we stood in the hall reading it, and I was treated to the after-glow of Monsieur Scitivaux's raptures.
The dedication was in Italian, and related how Rossini had composed the "Barbiere" for the Duke Cesarini, the director of the Teatro Argentina in Rome, to retrieve for him the fortunes of a bad season. Rossini went on to say that he had written to Paisiello, who had previously treated the same subject, to assure him that he in no way sought to compete with that master, well aware as he was of his own inferiority, and that he had avoided as much as possible to use the same incidents in his libretto. "I thought," he worded it, "that, having taken this precaution, I might consider myself safe from the censure of his friends and his legitimate admirers. I was mistaken! On the appearance of my opera, they precipitated themselves like wild beasts upon the beardless maestrino, and the first performance was a most stormy one. I, however, remained unconcerned; and, whilst the public hissed, I applauded my performers. Once the storm blown over, at the second performance, my 'Barbiere' had an excellent razor, and shaved the Romans so well that, to use theatrical language, I was carried home in triumph. There, my good friend, I have done what you desired. Be happy, and believe me, yours affectionately,
Giacomo Rossini.
"Paris, 22 Apr. 1860."
The facts related were well known, but here they were confirmed by the master's own narrative, and the recipient's happiness was unbounded.
The Jaques who was going to play to Rossini was my cousin, a partner in one of the old banking firms of Hamburg, and, besides, a thorough artist and virtuoso on that soul-stirring instrument, the violoncello. But it was not to have his soul stirred that Rossini gathered young musicians around him at that early hour of the day. They came to play his last compositions to him, and they remained to practise them at his house. You could often hear the sounds of various instruments proceeding from as many various rooms. The piano predominated, for at that time of his life Rossini was most assiduously composing for that instrument, labouring, as it seemed to me, under the fond delusion that he had discovered a new vein in the old mine which had produced such a fund of musical wealth. Sometimes he reminded one of Hummel's style, sometimes I thought I traced a Weber idea as it would be if filtered through the pen of a Mendelssohn. He would on no account allow his MSS. to leave the house. "Jamais," he said when my cousin expressed the wish to give the violoncello piece a day's practising at home, "Jamais; je ne veux pas dépendre du public." So the performers had to go to the Chaussée d'Antin, and prepare themselves there for the Saturday evenings at which the latest works of the master were produced.
Amongst those privileged young musicians was the pianist, Georges Pfeiffer, who has since become so popular a composer. Rossini would give him such curiously named productions to study as "Cornichons," "Radis," and the like. There was also a "Boléro tartare," and a certain Rondo in the style of Offenbach, the famous composer of "La belle Hélène," "Orfée aux Enfers," and other operettas that for years drew all Paris to the "Bouffes." He was universally credited with exercising the baneful influence of the evil eye, and Rossini, being superstitious, had headed his manuscript with a drawing of a gettatura, which should act as a charm to protect him. Georges Pfeiffer, no less superstitious—he always asserted he had good reason to be so—had managed to play the opening theme of the Rondo with the two fingers which in the gettatura are supposed to lay the evil spirit; and Rossini so fully entered into this serio-comic solution of the difficulty, that he expressed his warm approval, and added Pfeiffer's fingering to the manuscript.
Henri Wieniawski, the violinist, and his brother Joseph, the pianist, were also great friends of Rossini's. He was present at Henri's wedding. The bride, Miss Hampton, was lovely, the guests distinguished, and the wedding breakfast sumptuous, and all would have gone well if the best man—or the next best—had not unfortunately made an eloquent speech to propose the health of a near and dear relative of the bride's who had been buried not so very long ago.