To Auguste Morel.
“76 Harley Street, London, 31st November 1847.—Jullien asks me confidentially to get your report on the success of Verdi’s new opera.[23] We begin next week with the Bride of Lammermoor, which can hardly help going well with Madame Gras and Reeves. He has a beautiful voice, and sings as well as this awful English language will allow.
“I had a warm reception at one of Jullien’s concerts, but shall not begin my own until January.
“Your friend, M. Grimblot, has given me the entrée to his club, but heaven only knows what amusement is to be found in an English club. Macready gave a magnificent dinner in my honour last week; he is charming and most unassuming at home, though they say he is terrible at rehearsal. I have seen him in a new tragedy, Philip van Artevelde; he is grand, and has mounted the piece splendidly.
“No one here understands the management and grouping of a crowd as he does. It is masterly.”
“8th December.—The opening of our season was a success. Madame Gras and Reeves were recalled frantically four or five times, and they both deserved it.
“Reeves is a priceless discovery for Jullien; his voice is exquisite in quality, he is a good musician, has an expressive face, and plays with judgment.”
“14th January.—Jullien has landed us all in a dreadful bog, but don’t mention it in Paris, as we must not spoil his credit. It is not the Drury Lane venture that has ruined him; that was done before; now he has gone off to the provinces and is making a lot of money with his promenade concerts, while we take a fair amount each night at the theatre, none of which goes into our pockets, for we are not paid at all. Only the orchestra, chorus, and work-people are paid every week in order to keep the thing going somehow.
“If Jullien does not pay me on his return, I shall arrange with Lumley to give some concerts in Her Majesty’s Theatre, for there is a good opening here since poor Mendelssohn’s death.”
“12th February 1848.—My music has taken with the English as fire to gunpowder. The Rakoczy and Danse des Sylphes were encored. Everyone of importance, musically, was at Drury Lane for my concert, and most of the artists came to congratulate me. They had expected something diabolic, involved, incomprehensible. Now we shall see how they agree with our Paris critics. Davison himself wrote the Times critique; they cut half of it out from want of space; still the remainder has had its effect. Old Hogarth of the Daily News was truly comical: ‘My blood is on fire,’ said he; ‘never have I been excited like this by music.’”