My passion for music clung to me. I had become learned in the science. If I walked of a warm evening with a young lady, it was, as I expressed it in upstart pedantry, in an andante movement. Slow and fast both became decidedly low terms, and I could only condescend to say in place of them, adagio and allegretto. I had all the Italian musical terms, as contained in the elementary treatises, at my tongue’s end, and, in a practical, common sense community, would have been written down the ass that I really was, for the ridiculous and constant use I made of them.
But in —— there was a fine field for my learned talk, and the obscurity and nonsense of my conversation got me up a reputation for musical science which at first flattered me, and engendered a vanity for which I have since suffered severe retribution.
The nine days allowed for opening the eyes of young puppies having elapsed, mine were opened to a sense of my folly, and I by degrees broke myself of the habit I had adopted.
At the period of my entrée into the society of ——, music was the great and leading idea. A religious and moral cycle had succeeded to a dissipated and drinking cycle, and dancing, wine, etc., being excluded from the leading houses, music was the only resource. At once I became a lion.
“How beautifully Mr. Crotchet plays!” “Emma, my dear, come and look on; I want you to study Mr. Crotchet’s exquisite touch!” “Oh, how sweet!” These and kindred sounds issued from the lips of the witches in curls, lace and artificials, who gathered around me as I sat at Mrs. Flambeau’s piano, on the occasion of her first soirée. It was my debut, and is therefore memorable. I was playing a sonata of Beethoven’s, which I soon found none of them comprehended. I thought of “pearls before swine,” but went on, working out the mysteries and the meaning of the composition for my own gratification.
The witches, at the close, seemed rather weary, and could do little but simper and say “beautiful,” but the chief of them, one Madame Hecate, to whom tradition attached French parentage and critical taste, approached me and said—
“Pray, Monsieur Crotchet, (she always spoke with a French accent to strangers) do you play the Battle of Prague?”
I can recollect nothing but an emphatic “No, madam”—a feeling as of a pail of iced water pouring down my back—a confused breaking up of the circle around the piano—a fruitless search for a glass of wine—a prestissimo movement to the entry—a successful search for my hat—a rush to the street, and as I shut the door, the martial strains of the Battle of Prague, drummed out by a more complaisant amateur than myself, for the benefit of Madame Hecate.
Oh, that Battle of Prague! Who shall ever pretend to give its official bulletin? Who shall describe the cries of the wounded and the groans of the dying, elicited from its auditors as it has been “fought o’er again” on countless pianos? Its victims are legion. Its progress is remorseless. It goes on and will go on to the end of time, murdering the peace of mind of every luckless owner of an ear such as mine. Its composer—if the writer of such a disturbing work can be called a composer—must have been possessed of an evil spirit from the fatal battle-field, condemned to roam this earth for the torment of the race, and seeking retribution for his own victimization by victimizing all that come after him.
My next essay of the musical life of the city, was at a soirée of Professor Millefiori, the fashionable Italian vocal teacher—a sort of compromise, in appearance, between a Paris petit maître and an American Figaro. His pupils were all to sing, and by the courtesy usually extended to amateurs, I was invited.