Part 35

So one must not judge music at a first hearing; nor poetry; nor pictures at first sight; unless one be poet or painter or musician one's self--not even then! I may live to love thee yet, oh Tannhäuser!

Lucy Escott, Fanny Huddart, Elliot Galer, and Hamilton Braham--that was the cast; I hear their voices now....

One morning Hamilton Braham tried Barty's voice on the empty stage at St. James's Theatre--made him sing "When other lips."

"Sing out, man--sing out!" said the big bass. And Barty shouted his loudest--a method which did not suit him. I sat in the pit, with half a dozen Guardsmen, who were deeply interested in Barty's operatic aspirations.

It turned out that Barty was neither tenor nor barytone; and that his light voice, so charming in a room, would never do for the operatic stage; although his figure, in spite of his great height, would have suited heroic parts so admirably.

Besides, three or four years' training in Italy were needed--a different production altogether.

So Barty gave up this idea and made up his mind to be an artist. He got permission to work in the British Museum, and drew the "Discobolus," and sent his drawing to the Royal Academy, in the hope of being admitted there as a student. He was not.

Then an immense overwhelming homesickness for Paris came over him, and he felt he must go and study art there, and succeed or perish.

My father talked to him like a father, my mother like a mother; we all hung about him and entreated. He was as obdurate as Tennyson's sailor-boy whom the mermaiden forewarned so fiercely!

He was even offered a handsome appointment in the London house of Vougeot-Conti & Co.

But his mind was made up, and to my sorrow, and the sorrow of all who knew him, he fixed the date of his departure for the 2d of May (1856),--this being the day after a party at the Gibsons'--a young dance in honor of Leah's fifteenth birthday, on the 1st--and to which my sister had procured him an invitation.

He had never been to the Gibsons' before. They belonged to a world so different to anything he had been accustomed to--indeed, to a class that he then so much disliked and despised (both as ex-Guardsman and as the descendant of French toilers of the sea, who hate and scorn the bourgeois)--that I was curious to see how he would bear himself there; and rather nervous, for it would have grieved me that he should look down on people of whom I was getting very fond. It was his theory that all successful business people were pompous and purse-proud and vulgar.

I admit that in the fifties we very often were.

There may perhaps be a few survivals of that period: old nouveaux riches, who are still modestly jocose on the subject of each other's millions when they meet, and indulge in pompous little pleasantries about their pet economics, and drop a pompous little h now and then, and pretend they only did it for fun. But, dear me, there are other things to be vulgar about in this world besides money and uncertain aspirates.

If to be pompous and pretentious and insincere is to be vulgar, I really think the vulgar of our time are not these old plutocrats--not even their grandsons, who hunt and shoot and yacht and swagger with the best--but those solemn little prigs who have done well at school or college, and become radicals and agnostics before they've even had time to find out what men and women are made of, or what sex they belong to themselves (if any), and loathe all fun and sport and athletics, and rave about pictures and books and music they don't understand, and would pretend to despise if they did--things that were not even meant to be understood. It doesn't take three generations to make a prig--worse luck!

At the Gibsons' there was neither pompousness nor insincerity nor pretension of any kind, and therefore no real vulgarity. It is true they were a little bit noisy there sometimes, but only in fun.

When we arrived at that most hospitable house the two pretty drawing-rooms were already crammed with young people, and the dancing was in full swing.

I presented Barty to Mrs. Gibson, who received him with her usual easy cordiality, just as she would have received one of her husband's clerks, or the Prime Minister; or the Prince Consort himself, for that matter. But she looked up into his face with such frank unabashed admiration that I couldn't help laughing--nor could he!

She presented him to Mr. Gibson, who drew himself back and folded his arms and frowned; then suddenly, striking a beautiful stage attitude of surprised emotion, with his hand on his heart, he exclaimed:

"Oh! Monsewer! Esker-voo ker jer dwaw lah vee?--ah! kel bonnure!"

And this so tickled Barty that he forgot his manners and went into peals of laughter. And from that moment I ceased to exist as the bright particular star in Mr. Gibson's firmament of eligible young men: for in spite of the kink in my nose, and my stolid gravity, which was really and merely the result of my shyness, he had always looked upon me as an exceptionally presentable, proper, and goodly youth, and a most exemplary--that is, if my sister was to be trusted in the matter; for she was my informant.

I'm afraid Barty was not so immediately popular with the young cavaliers of the party--but all came right in due time. For after supper, which was early, Barty played the fool with Mr. Gibson, and taught him how to do a mechanical wax figure, of which he himself was the showman; and the laughter, both baritone and soprano, might have been heard in Russell Square. Then they sang an extempore Italian duet together which was screamingly droll--and so forth.

Leah distinguished herself as usual by being attentive to the material wants of the company: comfortable seats, ices, syrups, footstools for mammas, and wraps; safety from thorough draughts for grandpapas--the inherited hospitality of the clan of Gibson took this form with the sole daughter of their house and home; she had no "parlor tricks."

We remained the latest. It was a full moon, or nearly so--as usual on a balcony; for I remember standing on the balcony with Leah.

A belated Italian organ-grinder stopped beneath us and played a tune from I Lombardi, called "La mia letizia." Leah's hair was done up for the first time--in two heavy black bands that hid her little ears and framed her narrow chinny face--with a yellow bow plastered on behind. Such was the fashion then, a hideous fashion enough--but we knew no better. To me she looked so lovely in her long white frock--long for the first time--that Tavistock Square became a broad Venetian moonlit lagoon, and the dome of University College an old Italian church, and "La mia letizia" the song of Adria's gondolier.

I asked her what she thought of Barty.

"I really don't know," she said. "He's not a bit romantic, is he?"

"No; but he's very handsome. Don't you think so?"