Nicolo Paganini: His Life and Work

by Stephen S. Stratton

Having traced the career of Paganini "from the cradle to the grave," let us now look a little more closely at the man, the artist. Glimpses of his character have already been revealed, but so curiously interesting a personality will repay further study. Totally uneducated, he yet made himself so much a man of the world, as to enjoy the personal friendship of such notabilities as Lord Byron, Sir Thomas Clifford Constable, Lord Holland, Prince Metternich and others. In his official positions at Court he comported himself with dignity. He had the pride of the artist, and would not play if the conditions were not suitable. One instance has already been given. Here is another, which also occurred in Paris. Paganini was asked to play at a Court concert at the Tuilleries. He went the day before to inspect the salon where the function was to take place, and found the heavy draperies so numerous that the tones of his violin would be deadened, and the effect of his playing would be lost unless the curtains were removed or rearranged; he acquainted an official with his wish to alter them. To that august personage a "fiddler" was a mere nobody, and Paganini was given to understand his proper place. Highly offended with the manner of the official, Paganini resolved not to play. The Court was assembled for the concert, but the great violinist was absent. A messenger was sent to his hotel, and was informed that the Signor had retired to rest very early.

Mobbed by ill-mannered crowds whenever he appeared in the streets, (and this especially in London, when strangers not only spoke to him, but even felt him, to ascertain if he was really flesh and blood), Paganini, with his sensitive nature, shrank more and more from contact with the outer world. He was not a Milton, "whose soul was like a star, and dwelt apart," but he was essentially a solitary, a recluse. His character was the result of his environment. Accustomed to brutal treatment in his childhood, he became hardened; set free from restraint, he tasted the wild joys of youth, only to find them turn to Dead Sea apples. Schumann, in his "Advice to young musicians," wrote: "The laws of morality are also the laws of art." But Paganini had no mentor, and learnt by bitter experience the lesson of life. He was accused of avarice, and many ridiculous stories were told of him. When at Prague, it is said that even the members of the theatre were struck off the free list, and he was annoyed that the police who watched the upper galleries could not be made to pay for their places! He beat down a London laundress a halfpenny in her charge for washing his shirts, and Moscheles gives currency to the story, though he cannot vouch for its truth, that Paganini gave his servant a gallery ticket for one of his concerts on condition that the man served him gratuitously for one day! All these wretched things may have been true, more's the pity. But there is one little story that appears to have been overlooked. The father of Nicolo Paganini was avaricious, and compelled his son to minister to his avarice, even robbing him of the first-fruits of his own earnings; Nicolo in turn became avaricious, but it was for the sake of his little son, whose life he desired might be better than his own. "He saves for his yet uneducated child," wrote Guhr, in 1829. Yes, this man, proud, scornful, despising the crowds whose money made him rich, in the recesses of his heart nourished a love, pure and unselfish. That was the fine gold; his wealth was dross. His affection for the child was boundless, and he allowed the little fellow to tyrannise over him completely. There are pretty stories of his playing with the boy, but there is nothing about teaching the boy to play—the violin. The memory of his own childhood was quite sufficient to deter him from any attempt to force instruction on his boy, and cloud the sunshine of his young life.

The world gave Paganini its plaudits and its money; but there never seemed to be any bond of sympathy between the artist and the public. Yet Paganini could appreciate kindness. Moscheles relates that the father of his wife rendered Paganini some important service before the visit to England. When Paganini first called upon Moscheles he was profuse in expressions of gratitude, and taking down a miniature portrait of his benefactor he covered it with kisses. "Meantime," Moscheles writes, "we had leisure to study those olive-tinted, sharply defined features, the glowing eyes, the scanty, but long black hair, and the thin, gaunt figure, upon which the clothes hung loosely, the deep sunken cheeks, and those long, bony fingers." Moscheles was of service to Paganini during his first days in London, and, to use his own words, he was paid with quite as many honied epithets as his father-in-law received. But he suspected the Italian to be rather too sweet to be genuine. Indeed, the friendship was too fervent to last long, and money was the cause of the rupture. Mori commissioned Moscheles to write a piece "Gems à la Paganini," taking the precaution of obtaining the violinist's consent. His style is imitated, and he expresses his admiration of the piece. A second and third book of "Gems" are published, and down comes Paganini with the charge of musical piracy. His permission extended only to the first book. A lawsuit was commenced, but Paganini effected a compromise with Moscheles, conceding the free sale of the three books of "Gems" in return for pianoforte accompaniments to twelve small violin pieces. Moscheles reluctantly consented to write the accompaniments, but refused to allow his name (which Paganini wanted) to appear on the title-page. Mori had to pay something by way of damages, and Moscheles at last rejoiced at being quit of an episode so little worthy of an artist, and at having done with those dreadful lawyers.[32]

But quite enough has been said in reference to Paganini's avarice: it has been shown that he had a motive for saving money. Is it as easy to account for other traits of his character? That aloofness, that scorn of the world, that hard bargaining: "Take me or leave me," revealing callous indifference, was there no cause for all that? There is a very graphic, and at the same time, appalling, account of the impression produced by Paganini among the Parisians, which is translated at length in Dubourg's "The Violin." Berlioz wrote of the weird genius making his appearance in France during the uproar of the collapse of a dynasty, and arriving in Paris—with the cholera. The terrors of the scourge were powerless to check the tide of curiosity: the people were mad for the time being. This is the conclusion of the notice just mentioned: "Of such a public, and such an artist, how saddening is the sight!... The public, made up of idlers—of beings isolated, cold, corrupt—must be amused, forsooth! and the artist exhausts his taste and his sentiment, and well nigh perspires blood and water, to comply with their exactions—to amuse them! and if he attain this end, the public clap their hands, the manager of the theatre counts out to him a heap of gold, and he goes away, with his ears deafened at the noise which has surrounded him, and which, for a moment, it may be, has made his heart beat high;—he goes away, with a loving grasp tightened over the coin he has so hardly won; and now inwardly exclaims, with a smile of pity, 'The blockheads—the barbarians! who is there among them that can comprehend me—that can feel my intentions!' and then the home-returning public, selfish to the very soul, indemnify themselves for their finger's-end applause by sottish contempt, by remarks that are empty, or worse—that are scornful, bitter, shocking, disgusting even—such as those which may have been buzzed into one's ears in Italy or in Paris, but varied in a hundred ways, and aggravated at will, just as he varies and enlarges, twists and turns, beneath his magic bow, a subject of apparently the most simple and insignificant kind. And now the voices most distinguishable among the ebbing crowd murmur out the words, 'Gambler, Libertine'! or worse.... And the privileged public resort again to the theatre, to admire the talent of him who they comprehend not; and the artist returns, in like manner, to amuse those who provoke his pity, and whom he beholds so far below him! Thus we have contempt on one side, compassion on the other; applause from hands chilled with the touch of gold, on the one part,—on the other, sounds that borrow their animation from no social sympathy! Such are the relations between the public and the professor such the bonds that connect them!" Unhappy artist; miserable public! How shall we account for this pitiful state of things, this gulf between the performer and the auditor? We must seek the explanation in the letter to the Revue, referred to more than once, but now claiming our attention more directly.

The pictures of "Paganini in Prison," exhibited so lavishly while the artist was in Paris in 1831, provoked him to remark that there were some "honest fellows" making money of a calumny that had pursued his steps for the last fifteen years. He then referred to the different versions of the crime imputed to him: that he killed a rival whom he found in company with his mistress; or that it was his mistress who had been the victim of his jealous fury; the only point of agreement was the imprisonment. "Let me tell you," the letter continued, "what happened to myself in Padua about fifteen years ago (1816), on this very subject. I had given a concert with some success: the next day I went to a table-d'hôte; I entered the room late; was, perhaps, the sixtieth guest, and took my seat unnoticed. One of the company expressed himself in flattering terms of the effect produced by my performance the evening before. His next neighbour agreed in the praises bestowed on me, but added, 'Nobody ought to be surprised at Paganini's ability: he owes it all to an eight years' solitary imprisonment in a dungeon, with nothing but his violin to occupy his time, or soften the rigours of his confinement. He was condemned to this long incarceration for having assassinated a friend of mine, who was unfortunate enough to be his rival.' As you may easily believe, every one was loud in denouncing the enormity of my crime; when I addressed myself to the speaker, begging him to inform me where and when this tragical adventure had occurred. All eyes were in an instant turned upon me, and you may judge the astonishment of the company at finding the hero of this tale of murder and imprisonment one amongst them. The relater of the story was not a little embarrassed. 'It was not a friend of his own that had fallen—he had heard—he had been told—he believed—but after all it was very possible he might have been deceived,' etc. Now see, Sir, how easy it is to play with the reputation of an artist merely because men, inclined to indulge in idleness themselves, cannot conceive it possible that he may have studied as closely in his own chamber and in full possession of his liberty, as he would if he had been chained up in a dungeon."

There was an occurrence that gave rise to these reports, and which Paganini related in the same letter. "A violin player, named D——i,[33] who was at Milan in 1798, associated himself with two other men of bad character, and engaged with them in a plot to assassinate, by night, the curate of a neighbouring village, supposed to be in possession of much wealth. Luckily for the curate the heart of one of the conspirators failed him, and he denounced his companions. The gendarmes watched the spot, and took D——i and his accomplice into custody at the moment they arrived at the curate's dwelling. They were condemned to twenty years' confinement in irons, but General Menou, after he had been appointed governor of Milan, at the end of two years restored the violinist to liberty. Would you believe it, Sir? this is the sole foundation upon which the whole history of my incarceration has been erected. A violin player, whose name ended in i, had been engaged in a murder and imprisoned—it could only be Paganini—the assassinated party was converted into either my rival or my mistress, and it was I, Paganini, who had been so many years loaded with chains, and immured in a dungeon. Solely with the view of wringing from me the secret of my new system, have they complimented me with fetters, whose only effect would have been to paralyze my arms."

Paganini further stated that he called on the Italian ambassador resident in Vienna, to testify that he had known the artist for nearly twenty years, during all which time his conduct has been that of an honest man. He also pointed out that having been constantly before the public from the age of fourteen, he must have had a mistress and a rival when he was seven! for there was no room for an interval of eight years afterwards. It was at Vienna that one of the audience, while Paganini was playing "The Witches' Dance," distinctly saw the devil close to the violinist, guiding his fingers and directing his bow; the said devil was dressed in red and had horns and a tail, and the striking likeness of the countenances of the two, plainly proved the relationship between them. That pretty story followed Paganini everywhere: and, as has been seen, in Prague he had to publish a letter from his mother disproving the rumour of his Satanic parentage. There is something intensely pathetic in Paganini's conclusion: "I see nothing else for it but to leave malignity at liberty to disport itself at my expense."

In this prosaic, materialistic twentieth century, which believes in little besides money, there is no fear of any of our violin wonders being associated with the arch-fiend. They may be regarded as physic problems, but the supernatural is eliminated from the study. But Paganini did not live in the twentieth century, and in his day the devil was a very real personage, notwithstanding the temporary overthrow of much belief through the French Revolution, and the enthronement of the "Goddess of Reason" in the Church of Notre Dame, Paris. It may seem absurd, now, even to recall these calumnies; but we have to deal with the environment of a great genius, to study the cause of his failing to become great as a man; for surely he had the making of a fine character. That he should traverse the greater part of Europe, pursued by tales of devilry and murder, is one of the saddest comments on that period; that the "iron entered into his soul," and the man capable of affection became a miser and a misanthrope, is more mournful still. He was the "Flying Dutchman" of the violin.