“Moscow, November 19th (December 1st), 1886.
“ ... I arrived in Moscow early to-day. There has already been a rehearsal. I was ill again after my last letter to you. This time I was so bad that I decided to send for the doctor. It seemed to me that I was about to have a strange illness. Suddenly I received a telegram saying that I must be at the rehearsal.[116] I answered that the rehearsal was not to be thought of, for I could not travel. But at the end of half an hour I suddenly felt so well that—in spite of terrible disinclination—I went to Moscow. Every trace of headache, which for ten days had so affected me, vanished. Is not this a curious pathological case?”
To A. S. Arensky.
“November 24th (December 6th), 1886.
“Dear Friend Anton Stepanovich,—I only received your welcome letter yesterday; I knew already from Taneiev that you had composed Marguerite Gautier and dedicated it to me. Thank you cordially for this dedication. The attention and honour you have shown me touch me deeply. Marguerite lies beside me on the table, and—in my free moments, which are not many—I cast a glance at it here and there, with much interest and pleasure. Please do not feel hurt that I did not write you my impressions at once. At the first glance I found the work very interesting, because you have entirely departed from your accustomed style. Marguerite has so little resemblance to the Suite and the Symphony that one could easily suppose it came from the pen of a different man. The elegance of form, harmony, and orchestration are the same, but the character of the theme and its working out are quite different. Naturally the question arises: Is it better than the Symphony and the Suite? At present I cannot answer.”
Although somewhat anticipating my narrative, I will insert here an extract from a later letter of Tchaikovsky’s, in which he gives Arensky his opinion of Marguerite Gautier.
To A. Arensky.
“Maidanovo, April 2nd (14th), 1887.
“Dear Anton Stepanovich,—I wrote to you in August that I would pronounce judgment on Marguerite Gautier as soon as I had heard the work and had leisure to study the score. I held it all the more my duty to wait because, although I value your talent very highly, I do not like your Fantasia. It is very easy to praise a man who is highly esteemed. But to say to him: ‘Not beautiful; I do not like it,’ without basing one’s judgment on a full explanation, is very difficult....
“I must state my opinion briefly. First the choice of subject. It was very painful and mortifying to me, and to all your friends, that you had chosen La Dame aux Camelias as the subject of your Fantasia. How can an educated musician—when there are Homer, Shakespeare, Gogol, Poushkin, Dante, Tolstoi, Lermontov, and others—feel any interest in the production of Dumas fils, which has for its theme the history of a demi-mondaine adventuress which, even if written with French cleverness, is in truth false, sentimental, and vulgar? Such a choice might be intelligible in Verdi, who employed subjects which could excite people’s nerves at a period of artistic decadence; but it is quite incomprehensible in a young and gifted Russian musician, who has enjoyed a good education, and is, moreover, a pupil of Rimsky-Korsakov and a friend of S. Taneiev.