Au Bal Musette
It has often been remarked by philosophers and philistines alike that the commonest facts of existence escape our attention until they are impressed upon it in some unusual way. For example I knew nothing of the sovereign powers of citronella as a mosquito dispatcher until a plague of the insects drove me to make enquiries of a chemist. For years I believed that knocking the necks off bottles, lacking an opener, was the only alternative. A friend who caught me in this predicament showed me the other use to which the handles of high-boy drawers could be put. It was long my habit to quickly dispose of trousers which had been disfigured by cigarette burns, but that was before I had heard of _stoppage_, a process by which the original weave is cleverly counterfeited. And, wishing to dance, in Paris, I have been guilty of visits to the great dance halls and to the small smart places where champagne is oppressively the only listed beverage.
But that was before I discovered the _bal musette_.
One July night in Paris I had dinner with a certain lady at the Cou-Cou, followed by cognac at the Savoyarde. I find nothing strange in this program; it seems to me that I must have dined at the Cou-Cou with every one I have known in Paris from time to time, a range of acquaintanceship including Fernand, the _apache_, and the Comtesse de J----, and cognac at the Savoyarde usually followed the dinner. This evening at the Cou-Cou then resembled any other evening. Do you know how to go there? You must take a taxi-cab to the foot of the hill of Montmartre and then be drawn up in the _finiculaire_ to the top where the church of Sacre-Coeur squats proudly, for all the world like a mammoth Buddha (of course you may ride all the way up the mountain in your taxi if you like). From Sacre-Coeur one turns to the left around the board fence which, it would seem, will always hedge in this unfinished monument of pious Catholics; still turning to the left, through the Place du Tertre, in which one must not be stayed by the pleasant sight of the _Montmartroises bourgeoises_ eating _pet.i.te marmite_ in the open air, one arrives at the Place du Calvaire. The tables of the Restaurant Cou-Cou occupy nearly the whole of this tiny square, to which there are only two means of approach, one up the stairs from the city below, and the other from the Place du Tertre. An artist"s house disturbs the view on the side towards Paris; opposite is the restaurant, flanked on the right by a row of modest apartment houses, to which one gains entrance through a high wall by means of a small gate. Sundry visitors to these houses, some on bicycles, make occasional interruptions in the dinner.... From over this wall, too, comes the huge Cheshire cat (much bigger than Alice"s, a beautiful animal), which lounges about in the hope, frequently realized, that some one will give him a chicken bone.... Conterminous to the restaurant, on the right, is a tiny cottage, fronted by a still tinier garden, fenced in and gated. Many of the visitors to the Cou-Cou hang their hats and sticks on this fence and its gate. I have never seen the occupants of the cottage in any of my numerous visits to this open air restaurant, but once, towards eleven o"clock the crowd in the square becoming too noisy, the upper windows were suddenly thrown up and a pailful of water descended.... "_Per Baccho!_" quoth the inn-keeper for, it must be known, the Restaurant Cou-Cou is Italian by nature of its _patron_ and its cooking.
This night, I say, had been as the others. The Cou-Cou is (and in this respect it is not exceptional in Paris) safe to return to if you have found it to your liking in years gone by. Perhaps some day the small boy of the place will be grown up. He is a real _enfant terrible_. It is his pleasure to _tutoyer_ the guests, to amuse himself by pretending to serve them, only to bring the wrong dishes, or none at all. If you call to him he is deaf. Any hope of _revanche_ is abandoned in the reflection of the super-retaliations he himself conceives. One young man who expresses himself freely on the subject of Pietro receives a plate of hot soup down the back of his neck, followed immediately by a "_Pardon, Monsieur_," said not without respect. But where might Pietro"s father be? He is in the kitchen cooking and if you find your dinner coming too slowly at the hands of the distracted maid servants, who also have to put up with Pietro, go into the kitchen, pa.s.sing under the little vine-clad porch wherein you may discover a pair of lovers, and help yourself. And if you find some one else"s dinner more to your liking than your own take that off the stove instead. At the Cou-Cou you pay for what you eat, not for what you order. And the Signora, Pietro"s mother? That unhappy woman usually stands in front of the door, where she interferes with the pa.s.sage of the girls going for food. She wrings her hands and moans, "_Mon Dieu, quel monde!_" with the idea that she is helping vastly in the manipulation of the machinery of the place.
And the _monde_; who goes there? It is not too _chic_, this _monde_, and yet it is surely not _bourgeois_; if one does not recognize M.
Rodin or M. Georges Feydeau, yet there are compensations.... The girls who come attended by bearded companions, are unusually pretty; one sees them afterwards at the bars and _bals_ if one does not go to the Abbaye or Pages.... It makes a very pleasant picture, the Place du Calvaire towards nine o"clock on a summer night when tiny lights with pink globes are placed on the tables. The little square twinkles with them and the couples at the tables become very gay, and sometimes sentimental. And when the pink lights appear a small boy in blue trousers comes along to light the street lamp. Then the urchins gather on the wall which hedges in the garden on the fourth side of the square and chatter, chatter, chatter, about all the things that French boys chatter about. Naturally they have a good deal to say about the people who are eating.
I have described the Cou-Cou as it was this night and as it has been all the nights during the past eight summers that I have been there.
The dinner too is always the same. It is served _a la carte_, but one is not given much choice. There is always a _potage_, always _spaghetti_, always chicken and a salad, always a lobster, and _zabaglione_ if one wants it. The wine--it is called _chianti_--is tolerable. And the _addition_ is made upon a slate with a piece of white chalk. "_Qu"est-ce que monsieur a mange?_" Sometimes it is very difficult to remember, but it is necessary. Such honesty compels an exertion. It is all added up and for the two of us on this evening, or any other evening, it may come to nine _francs_, which is not much to pay for a good dinner.
Then, on this evening, and every other evening, we went on, back as we had come, round past the other side of Sacre-Coeur, past the statue of the Chevalier who was martyred for refusing to salute a procession (why he refused I have never found out, although I have asked everybody who has ever dined with me at the Cou-Cou) to the Cafe Savoyarde, the broad windows of which look out over pretty much all the Northeast of Paris, over a glittering labyrinth of lights set in an obscure sea of darkness. It was not far from here that Louise and Julien kept house when they were interrupted by Louise"s mother, and it was looking down over these lights that they swore those eternal vows, ending with Louise"s "_C"est une Feerie!_" and Julien"s "_Non, c"est la vie!_" One always remembers these things and feels them at the Savoyarde as keenly as one did sometime in the remote past watching Mary Garden and Leon Beyle from the topmost gallery of the Opera-Comique after an hour and a half wait in the _queue_ for one _franc_ tickets (there were always people turned away from performances of _Louise_ and so it was necessary to be there early; some other operas did not demand such punctuality). There is a terrace outside the Savoyarde, a tiny terrace, with just room for one man, who griddles _gaufrettes_, and three or four tiny tables with chairs. At one of these we sat that night (just as I had sat so many times before) and sipped our cognac.
It is difficult in an adventure to remember just when the departure comes, when one leaves the past and strides into the future, but I think that moment befell me in this cafe ... for it was the first time I had ever seen a cat there. He was a lazy, splendid animal. In New York he would have been an oddity, but in Paris there are many such beasts. Tawny he was and soft to the touch and of a hugeness. He was lying on the bar and as I stroked his coat he purred melifluously....
I stroked his warm fur and thought how I belonged to the mystic band (Gautier, Baudelaire, Merimee, all knew the secrets) of those who are acquainted with cats; it is a feeling of pride we have that differentiates us from the dog lovers, the pride of the appreciation of indifference or of conscious preference. And it was, I think, as I was stroking the cat that my past was smote away from me and I was projected into the adventure for, as I lifted the animal into my arms, the better to feel its warmth and softness, it sprang with strength and unsheathed claws out of my embrace, and soon was back on the bar again, "just as if nothing had happened." There was blood on my face.
Madame, behind the bar, was apologetic but not chastening. "_Il avait peur_," she said. "_Il n"est pas mechant._" The wound was not deep, and as I bent to pet the cat again he again purred. I had interfered with his habits and, as I discovered later, he had interfered with mine.
We decided to walk down the hill instead of riding down in the _finiculaire_, down the stairs which form another of the pictures in _Louise_, with the ab.u.t.ting houses, into the rooms of which one looks, conscious of prying. And you see the old in these interiors, making shoes, or preparing dinner, or the middle-aged going to bed, but the young one never sees in the houses in the summer.... It was early and we decided to dance; I thought of the Moulin de la Galette, which I had visited twice before. The Moulin de la Galette waves its gaunt arms in the air half way up the _b.u.t.te_ of Montmartre; it serves its purpose as a dance hall of the quarter. One meets the pretty little _Montmartroises_ there and the young artists; the entrance fee is not exorbitant and one may drink a bock. And when I have been there, sitting at a small table facing the somewhat vivid mural decoration which runs the length of one wall, drinking my brown _bock_, I have remembered the story which Mary Garden once told me, how Albert Carre to celebrate the hundredth--or was it the twenty-fifth?--performance of _Louise_, gave a dinner there--so near to the scenes he had conceived--to Charpentier and how, surrounded by some of the most notable musicians and poets of France, the composer had suddenly fallen from the table, face downwards; he had starved himself so long to complete his masterpiece that food did not seem to nourish him. It was the end of a brilliant dinner. He was carried away ... to the Riviera; some said that he had lost his mind; some said that he was dying. Mary Garden herself did not know, at the time she first sang _Louise_ in America, what had happened to him. But a little later the rumour that he was writing a trilogy was spread about and soon it was a known fact that at least one other part of the trilogy had been written, _Julien_; that lyric drama was produced and everybody knows the story of its failure. Charpentier, the natural philosopher and the poet of Montmartre, had said everything he had to say in _Louise_. As for the third play, one has heard nothing about that yet.
But on this evening the Moulin de la Galette was closed and then I remembered that it was open on Thursday and this was Wednesday. Is it Thursday, Sat.u.r.day, and Sunday that the Moulin de la Galette is open?
I think so. By this time we were determined to dance; but where? We had no desire to go to some stupid place, common to tourists, no such place as the Bal Tabarin lured us; nor did the Grelot in the Place Blanche, for we had been there a night or two before. The Elysee Montmartre (celebrated by George Moore) would be closed. Its _patron_ followed the schedule of days adopted for the Galette.... To chance I turn in such dilemmas.... I consulted a small boy, who, with his companion, had been good enough to guide us through many winding streets to the Moulin. Certainly he knew of a _bal_. Would _monsieur_ care to visit a _bal musette_? His companion was horrified. I caught the phrase "_mal frequente_." Our curiosity was aroused and we gave the signal to advance.
There were two grounds for my personal curiosity beyond the more obvious ones. I seemed to remember to have read somewhere that the ladies of the court of Louis XIV played the _musette_, which is French for bag-pipe. It was the fashionable instrument of an epoch and the _musettes_ played by the _grandes dames_ were elaborately decorated.
The word in time slunk into the dictionaries of musical terms as descriptive of a drone ba.s.s. Many of Gluck"s ballet airs bear the t.i.tle, _Musette_. Perhaps the ba.s.s was even performed on a bag-pipe.... "_Mal frequente_" in Parisian _argot_ has a variety of significations; in this particular instance it suggested _apaches_ to me. A _bal_, for instance, attended by _cocottes_, _mannequins_, or _modeles_, could not be described as _mal frequente_ unless one were speaking to a boarding school miss, for all the public _bals_ in Paris are so attended. No, the words spoken to me, in this connection, could only mean _apaches_. The confusion of epochs began to invite my interest and I wondered, in my mind"s eye, how a Louis XIV _apache_ would dress, how he would be represented at a costume ball, and a picture of a ragged silk-betrousered person, flaunting a plaid-bellied instrument came to mind. An imagination often leads one violently astray.
The two urchins were marching us through street after street, one of them whistling that pleasing tune, _Le lendemain elle etait souriante_. Dark pa.s.sage ways intervened between us and our destination: we threaded them. The cobble stones of the underfoot were not easy to walk on for my companion, shod in high-heels from the Place Vendome.... The urchins amused each other and us by capers on the way. They could have made our speed walking on their hands, and they accomplished at least a third of the journey this way. Of course, I deluged them with large round five and ten _centimes_ pieces.
We arrived at last before a door in a short street near the Gare du Nord. Was it the Rue Jessaint? I do not know, for when, a year later, I attempted to re-find this _bal_ it had disappeared.... We could hear the hum of the pipes for some paces before we turned the corner into the street, and never have pipes sounded in my ears with such a shrill significance of being somewhere they ought not to be, never but once, and that was when I had heard the piper who accompanies the dinner of the Governor of the Bahamas in Na.s.sau. Marching round the porch of the Governor"s Villa he played _The Blue Bells of Scotland_ and _G.o.d Save the King_, but, hearing the sound from a distance through the interstices of the cocoa-palm fronds in the hot tropical night, I could only think of a Hindoo blowing the pipes in India, the charming of snakes.... So, as we turned the corner into the Rue Jessaint, I seemed to catch a faint glimpse of a scene on the lawn at Versailles.... Louis XIV--it was the epoch of Cinderella!
But it wasn"t a bag-pipe at all. That we discovered when we entered the room, after pa.s.sing through the bar in the front. The _bal_ was conducted in a large hall at the back of the _maison_. In the doorway lounged an _agent de service_, always a guest at one of these functions, I found out later. There were rows of tables, long tables, with long wooden benches placed between them. One corner of the floor was cleared--not so large a corner either--for dancing, and on a small platform sat the strangest looking youth, like Peter Pan never to grow old, like the _Monna Lisa_ a boy of a thousand years, without emotion or expression of any sort. He was playing an accordion; the bag-pipe, symbol of the _bal_, hung disused on the wall over his head. His accordion, manipulated with great skill, was augmented by sleigh-bells attached to his ankles in such a manner that a minimum of movement produced a maximum of effect; he further added to the complexity of sound and rhythm by striking a cymbal occasionally with one of his feet. The music was both rhythmic and ordered, now a waltz, now a tune in two-four time, but never faster or slower, and never ending ...
except in the middle of each dance, for a brief few seconds, while the _patronne_ collected a _sou_ from each dancer, after which the dance proceeded. All the time we remained never did the musician smile, except twice, once briefly when I sent word to him by the waiter to order a _consommation_ and once, at some length, when we departed. On these occasions the effect was almost emotionally illuminating, so inexpressive was the ordinary cast of his features. A strange lad; I like to think of him always sitting there, pa.s.sively, playing the accordion and shaking his sleigh-bells. He suggested a static picture, a thing of always, but I know it is not so, for even the next summer he had disappeared along with the _bal_ and now he may have been shot in the Battle of the Marne or he may have murdered his _gigolette_ and been transported to one of the French penal colonies.... An _apache, en musicien!_ ... black cloth around his throat, hair parted in the middle, _velours_ trousers; a _vrai apache_ I tell you, a cool, cunning creature, shredded with cocaine and absinthe, monotonous in his virtuosity, playing the accordion. He had begun before we arrived and he continued after we left. I like to think of him as always playing, but it is not so....
As for the dancers, they were of various kinds and sorts. The women had that air which gave them the stamp of a quarter; they wore loose _blouses_, tucked in plaid skirts, or dark blue skirts, or multi-coloured calico skirts (if you have seen the lithographs of Steinlen you may reconstruct the picture with no difficulty) and they danced in that peculiar fashion so much in vogue in the Northern outskirts of Paris. The men seized them tightly and they whirled to the inexorable music when it was a waltz, whirled and whirled, until one thought of the Viennese and how they become as dervishes and j.a.panese mice when one plays Johann Strauss. But in the dances in two-four time their way was more our way, something between a one-step, a mattchiche, and a tango, with strange fascinating steps of their own devising, a folk-dance manner.... Yes, under their feet, the dance became a real dance of the people and, when we entered into it, our feet seemed heavy and our steps conventional, although we tried to do what they did. (How they did laugh at us!) And the strange youth emphasized the effect of folk-dancing by playing old _chansons de France_ which he mingled with his repertory of _cafe-concert_ airs.
And there was achieved that wonderful thing (to an artist) a mixture of _genres_--intriguing one"s curiosity, awakening the most dormant interest, and inspiring the dullest imagination.
This was my first night at a _bal musette_ and my last in that year, for shortly afterwards I left for Italy and in Italy one does not dance. But the next season found me anxious to renew the adventure, to again enjoy the pleasures of the _bal musette_. I have said I was perhaps wrong in recalling the street as the Rue Jessaint, or perhaps the old _maison_ had disappeared. At any rate, when I searched I could not find the _bal_, not even the bar. So again I appealed for help, this time to a chauffeur, who drove me to the opposite side of the city, to the _quartier_ of the _Halles_.... And I was beginning to think that the man had misunderstood me, or was stupid. "He will take me to a cabaret, l"Ange Gabriel or"--and I rapidly revolved in my mind the possibilities of this quarter where the _apaches_ come to the surface to feel the purse of the tourist, who buys drinks as he listens to stories of murders, some of which have been committed, for it is true that some of the real _apaches_ go there (I know because my friend Fernand did and it was in l"Ange Gabriel that he knocked all the teeth down the throat of Angelique, _sa gigolette_. You may find the life of these creatures vividly and amusingly described in that amazing book of Charles-Henry Hirsch, "Le Tigre et Coquelicot" It is the only book I have read about the _apaches_ of modern Paris that is worth its pages). But the idea of l"Ange Gabriel was not amusing to me this evening and I leaned forward to ask my chauffeur if he had it in mind to subst.i.tute another attraction for my desired _bal musette_.
His reply was rea.s.suring; it took the form of a gesture, the waving of a hand towards a small lighted globe depending over the door of a little _marchand de vin_. On this globe was painted in black letters the single word, _bal_. We were in the narrow Rue des Gravilliers--I was there for the first time--and the _bal_ was the Bal des Gravilliers.
The bar is so small, when one enters, that there is no intimation of the really splendid aspect of the dancing room. For here there are two rooms separated by the dancing floor, two halls filled with tables, with long wooden benches between them. Benches also line the walls, which are white with a grey-blue frieze; the lighting is brilliant.
The musicians play in a little balcony, and here there are two of them, an accordionist and a guitarist. The performer on the accordion is a _virtuoso_; he takes delight in winding florid ornament, after the manner of some brilliant singer impersonating Rosina in _Il Barbiere_, around the melodies he performs. As in the Rue Jessaint a _sou_ is demanded in the middle of each dance. But there comparison must cease, for the life here is gayer, more of a character. The types are of the _Halles_.... There are strange exits....
A short woman enters; "_elle s"avance en se balancant sur ses hanches comme une pouliche du haras de Cordoue_"; she suggests an operatic Carmen in her swagger. She is slender, with short, dark hair, cropped _a la_ Boutet de Monvel, and she flourishes a cigarette, the smoke from which wreathes upward and obscures--nay makes more subtle--the strange poignancy of her deep blue eyes. Her nose is of a snubness. It is the _mome_ Estelle, and as she pa.s.ses down the narrow aisle, between the tables, there is a stir of excitement.... The men raise their eyes.... Edouard, _le pet.i.t_, flicks a _louis_ carelessly between his thumb and fore-finger, with the long dirty nails, and then pa.s.ses it back into his pocket. Do not mistake the gesture; it is not made to entice the _mome_, nor is it a sign of affluence; it is Edouard"s means of demanding another _louis_ before the night is up, if it be only a "_louis de dix francs_." Estelle looks at him boldly; there is no fear in her eyes; you can see that she would face death with Carmen"s calm if the Fates cut the thread to that effect.... The music begins and Estelle dances with Carmella, _l"Arabe_. Edouard glowers and pulls his little grey cap down tower.... It is a waltz....
Suddenly he is on the floor and Estelle is pressed close to his body.... Carmella sits down. She smiles, and presently she is dancing with Jean-Baptiste.... Estelle and Edouard are now whirling, whirling, and all the while his dark eyes look down piercingly into her blue eyes. The music stops. Estelle fumbles in her stocking for two _sous_.
Edouard lights a _Maryland_.
There is a newcomer tonight. (I am talking to the _agent de service_.) She is of a youth and she is certainly from Brittany. I see her sitting in a corner, waiting for something, trying to know. "She will learn," says my friend, "She will learn to pay like the others." That is the _gros_ Pierre who regards her. He twirls his moustache and considers, and in the end he lumbers to her and asks her to dance.
She is willing to do so, but the intensity of Pierre frightens her, frightens and intrigues.... There is a sign on the wall that one must not stamp one"s feet, but no other prohibition.... He twists her finger purposely as they whirl ... and whirl. She cowers. _Gros_ Pierre is very big and strong. "_T"es bath, mome_," I hear him say, as they pa.s.s me by.... The dance over, he towers above her for a brief second before he swaggers out.... Estelle smiles. Her lips move and she speaks quickly to Edouard, _le pet.i.t_.... He does not listen. Why should he listen to his _gigolette_? She is wasting her time here anyway. He becomes impatient.... Carmella smiles across the room in a brief second of chance and Estelle answers the smile. Carmella holds up three fingers (it is now 1.30). Estelle nods her head quickly. The musicians are always playing, except in the middle of the dance when _madame, la patronne_, gathers in the _sous_.... Only from one she takes nothing.... He is twenty and very blonde and he is dancing with _Madame_.... Between dances she pays his _consommations_.... Estelle rises slowly and walks out while Carmella, _l"Arabe_, follows her with his eyes. Edouard, _le pet.i.t_, lights a _Maryland_ and poises a _louis_ between his thumb and fore-finger, the nails of which are long and dirty.... The music is always playing.... The little girl from Brittany is again alone in the corner. There is fear in her face.
She is beginning to know. She summons her courage and walks to the door, on through.... The _agent de service_ twirls his moustache and points after her. "She soon will know." I follow. She hesitates for a second at the street door and then starts towards the corner.... She reaches the corner and pa.s.ses around it.... I hear a scream ... the sound of running footsteps ... the beat of a horse"s hoofs ... the rolling of wheels on the cobble stones....
_November 11, 1915._
Music and Cooking
_"Give me some music,--music, moody food Of us that trade in love."_
Shakespeare"s _Cleopatra_.
Music and Cooking
It is my firm belief that there is an intimate relationship between the stomach and the ear, the saucepan and the crotchet, the mysteries of Mrs. Rorer and the mysteries of Mme. Marchesi. It has even occurred to me that one of the reasons our American composers are so barren in ideas is because as a race we are not interested in cooking and eating. Those countries in which music plays the greater part in the national life are precisely those which are the most interested in the culinary art. The food of Italy, the cooking, is celebrated; every peasant in that sunny land sings, and the voices of some Italians have reverberated around the world. The very melodies of Verdi and Rossini are inextricably twined in our minds around memories of _ravioli_ and _zabaglione_. _Vesti la Giubba_ is _spaghetti_. The composers of these melodies and their interpreters alike cooked, ate, and drank with joy, and so they composed and sang with joy too. Men with indigestion may be able to write novels, but they cannot compose great music.... The Germans spend more time eating than the people of any other country (at least they did once). It is small occasion for wonder, therefore, that they produce so many musicians. They are always eating, mammoth plates heaped high with Bavarian cabbage, _Koenigsberger Klopps_, _Hasenpfeffer_, noodles, sauerkraut, _Wiener Schnitzel_ ... drinking seidels of beer. They escort sausages with them to the opera. All the women have their skirts honeycombed with capacious pockets, in which they carry substantial lunches to eat while Isolde is deceiving King Mark. Why, the very principle of German music is based on a theory of well-fed auditors. The voluptuous scores of Richard Wagner, Richard Strauss, Max Schillings and Co. were not written for skinny, ill-nourished wights. Even Beethoven demands flesh and bone of his hearers. The music of Bach is directly aimed against the doctrine of asceticism. "The German capacity for feeling emotion in music has developed to the same extent as the capacity of the German stomach for containing food," writes Ernest Newman, "but in neither the one case nor the other has there been a corresponding development in refinement of perceptions. German sentimental music is not quite as gross as German food and German feeding, but it comes very near to it sometimes.... "The Germans do not taste," said Montaigne, "they gulp."
As with their food, so with the emotions of their music. So long as they get them in sufficient ma.s.s, of the traditional quality, and with the traditional pungent seasoning, they are content to leave piquancy and variety of effect to others."... Once in Munich in a second storey window of the Bayerischebank I saw a small boy, about ten years old, sitting outside on the sill, washing the panes of gla.s.s. Opposite him on the same sill a dachshund reposed on her paws, regarding her master affectionately. Between the two stood a half-filled toby of foaming Lowenbrau, which, from time to time, the lad raised to his lips, quaffing deep draughts. And when he set the pot down he whistled the first subject of Beethoven"s _Fifth Symphony_. On Sunday afternoons, in the gardens which invariably surround the Munich breweries, the happy mothers, who gather to listen to the band play while they drink beer, frequently replenish the empty nursing bottles of their offspring at the taps from which flows the deep brown beverage.... The food of the French is highly artificial, delicately prepared and served, and flavoured with infinite art: _vol au vent a la reine_ and Ma.s.senet, _pet.i.ts pois a l"etuvee_ and Gounod, _oeuf Ste. Clotilde_ and Cesar Franck, all strike the tongue and the ear quite pleasantly. Des Esseintes and his liqueur symphony were the inventions of a Frenchman.... Hungarian goulash and Hungarian rhapsodies are certainly designed to be taken in conjunction....
Russian music tastes of _kascha_ and _bortsch_ and vodka. The happy, hearty eaters of Russia, the drunken, sodden drinkers of Russia are reflected in the scores of _Boris G.o.dunow_ and _Petrouchka_.... In England we find that the great English meat pasties and puddings appeared in the same century with the immortal Purcell.... But in America we import our cooks ... and our music. As a race we do not like to cook. We scarcely like to eat. We certainly do not enjoy eating. We will never have a national music until we have national dishes and national drinks and until we like good food. It is significant that our national drinks at present are mixed drinks, the ingredients of which are foreign. It is doubly significant that that section of the country which produces chicken _a la Maryland_, corn bread, beaten biscuit, mint juleps, and New Orleans fizzes has furnished us with the best of such music as we can boast. Maine has offered us no _Suwanee River_; we owe no _Swing Low, Sweet Chariot_ to Nebraska. The best of our ragtime composers are Jews, a race which regards eating and cooking of sufficient importance to include rules for the preparation and disposition of food in its religious tenets.
Most musicians and those who enjoy listening to music, like to eat (this does not mean that people who like to eat always desire to listen to music at the same time, but nowadays one has little choice in the matter); what is more pregnant, most of them like to cook. We may include even the music critics, one of whom (Henry T. Finck) has written a book about such matters. The others eat ... and expand.
James Huneker devotes sixteen pages of "The New Cosmopolis" to the "maw of the monster." And as H. L. Mencken has pointed out, "The Pilsner motive runs through the book from cover to cover." Dinners are constantly being given for the musicians and critics to meet and talk over thirteen courses with wine. You may read Mr. Krehbiel"s glowing accounts of the dinner given to Adelina Patti (a dinner referred to in Joseph Hergesheimer"s lyric novel, "The Three Black Pennys") on the occasion of her twenty-fifth anniversary as a singer, of the dinner to Marcella Sembrich to mark her retirement from the opera stage, and of a dinner to Teresa Carreno when she proposed a toast to her three husbands.... Go to the opera house and observe the lady singers, with their ample bosoms and their broad hips, the men with their expansive paunches ... and use your imagination. Why is it, when a singer is interviewed for a newspaper, that she invariably finds herself tired of hotel food and wants an apartment of her own, where she can cook to her stomach"s content? Why are the musical journals and the Sunday supplements of the newspapers always publishing pictures of contralti with their sleeves rolled back to the elbows, their Poiret gowns (cunningly and carefully exhibited nevertheless) covered with ap.r.o.ns, baking bread, turning omelettes, or preparing clam broth Uncle Sam?
You, my reader, have surely seen these pictures, but it has perhaps not occurred to you to conjure up a reason for them.
Edgar Saltus says: "A perfect dinner should resemble a concert. As the _morceaux_ succeed each other, so, too, should the names of the composers." Few dinners in New York may be regarded as concerts and still fewer restaurants may be looked upon as concert halls, except, unfortunately, in the literal sense. However, if you can find a restaurant where opera singers and conductors eat you may be sure it is a good one. Huneker describes the old Lienau"s, where William Steinway, Anton Seidl, Theodore Thomas, Scharwenka, Joseffy, Lilli Lehmann, Max Heinrich, and Victor Herbert used to gather. Follow Alfred Hertz and you will be in excellent company in a double sense.
Then watch him consume a plateful of Viennese pastry. If you have ever seen Emmy Destinn or Feodor Chaliapine eat you will feel that justice has been done to a meal. I once sat with the Russian ba.s.s for twelve hours, all of which time he was eating or drinking. He began with six plates of steaming onion soup (cooked with cheese and toast). The old New Year"s eve festivities at the Gadski-Tauschers" resembled the storied banquets of the middle ages.... Boars" heads, meat pies, _salade macedoine_, _coeur de palmier_, _hollandaise_ were washed down with magnums and quarts of Irroy brut, 1900, Pol Roger, Chambertin, graceful Bohemian crystal goblets of Liebfraumilch and Johannisberger Schloss-Auslese. Mary Garden once sent a jewelled gift to the _chef_ at the Ritz-Carlton in return for a superb fish sauce which he had contrived for her. H. E. Krehbiel says that Brignoli "probably ate as no tenor ever ate before or since--ravenously as a Prussian dragoon after a fast." _Peche Melba_ has become a stable article on many menus in many cities in many lands. Agnes G. Murphy, in her biography of Mme. Melba, says that one day the singer, Joachim, and a party of friends stopped at a peasant"s cottage near Bergamo, where they were regaled with such delicious macaroni that Melba persuaded her friends to return another day and wait while the peasant taught her the exact method of preparing the dish. In at least one New York restaurant _oeuf Toscanini_ is to be found on the bill. I have heard Olive Fremstad complain of the cooking in this hotel in Paris, or that hotel in New York, or the other hotel in Munich, and when she found herself in an apartment of her own she immediately set about to cook a few special dishes for herself.
Two musicians I know not only keep restaurants in New York, but actually prepare the dinners themselves. One of them is at the same time a singer in the Metropolitan Opera Company. Have you seen Bernard Begue standing before his cook stove preparing food for his patrons?
His huge form, clad in white, viewed through the open doorway connecting the dining room with the kitchen, almost conceals the great stove, but occasionally you can catch sight of the pots and pans, the _ca.s.seroles_ of _pot-au-feu_, the roasting chicken, the filets of sole, all the ingredients of a dinner, _cuisine bourgeoise_ ... and after dining, you can hear Begue sing the Uncle-priest in _Madama b.u.t.terfly_ at the Opera House.
Or have you seen Giacomo (and have not Meyerbeer and Puccini been bearers of this name?) Pogliani turning from the _spaghetti_ theme chromatically to that of the _risotto_, the most succulent and appetizing _risotto_ to be tasted this side of Bonvecchiati"s in Venice ... or the _polenta_ with _funghi_.... But, best of all, the roasts, and were it not that the Prince Troubetskoy is a vegetarian you would fancy that he came to Pogliani"s for these viands. And it must not be forgotten that this supreme cook is--or was--a ba.s.soon player of the first rank, that he is a graduate of the Milan Conservatory. The ba.s.soon is a difficult instrument. It is sometimes called the "comedian of the orchestra," but there are few who can play it at all, still fewer who can play it well. Ba.s.soonists are highly paid and they are in demand. Walter Damrosch used to say that when he was engaging a ba.s.soon player he would ask him to play a pa.s.sage from the ba.s.soon part in _Scheherazade_. If he could play that, he could play anything else written for his instrument. Pogliani gave up the ba.s.soon for the fork, spoon, and saucepan. Like Prospero he buried his magic wand and in Viafora"s cartoon the instrument lies idle in the cobwebs.
Charles Santley"s "Reminiscences" and "Student and Singer" are full of references to food: "ox-hearts, stuffed with onions," "a joint of meat, well cooked, with a bright brown crust which prevented the juices escaping," "a splendid shoulder of mutton, a picture to behold, and a _peas pudding_," and "whaffles" are a few of the dishes referred to with enthusiasm. In America a newspaper gravely informed its readers that "Santley says squash pie is the best thing to sing on he knows!" Santley was a true pantophagist, but he was worsted in his first encounter with the American oyster: "I had often heard of the celebrated American oyster, which half a dozen people had tried to swallow without success, and was anxious to learn if the story were founded on fact. c.u.mmings conducted me to a cellar in Broadway, where, upon his order, a waiter produced two plates, on which were half a dozen objects, about the size and shape of the sole of an ordinary lady"s shoe, on each of which lay what appeared to me to be a very bilious tongue, accompanied by smaller plates containing shredded white cabbage raw. I did not admire the look of the repast, but I never discard food on account of looks. I took up an oyster and tried to get it into my mouth, but it was of no use; I tried to ram it in with the b.u.t.t-end of the fork, but all to no purpose, and I had to drop it, and, to the great indignation of the waiter, paid and left the oysters for him to dispose of as he might like best. I presume those oysters are eaten, but I cannot imagine by whom; I have rarely seen a mouth capable of the necessary expansion. I soon found out that there were plenty of delicious oysters in the States within the compa.s.s of ordinary jaws."
J. H. Mapleson says in his "Memoirs" that at the Opera at Lodi, where he made his debut as a tenor, refreshments of all kinds were served to the audience between the acts and every box was furnished with a little kitchen for cooking macaroni and baking or frying pastry. The wine of the country was drunk freely, not out of gla.s.ses, but "in cla.s.sical fashion--from bowls." Mapleson also tells us that Del Puente was a "very tolerable cook." On one trying occasion he prepared macaroni for his impressario. Michael Kelly declares that the sight of Signor St. Giorgio entering a fruit shop to eat peaches, nectarines, and a pineapple, was really what stimulated him to study for a career on the stage. "While my mouth watered, I asked myself why, if I a.s.siduously studied music, I should not be able to earn money enough to lounge about in fruit-shops, and eat peaches and pineapples as well as Signor St. Giorgio...."
Lillian Russell is a good cook. I can recommend her recipe for the preparation of mushrooms: "Put a lump of b.u.t.ter in a chafing dish (or a saucepan) and a slice of Spanish onion and the mushrooms minus the stems; let them simmer until they are all deliciously tender and the juice has run from them--about twenty minutes should be enough--then add a cupful of cream and let this boil. As a last touch squeeze in the juice of a lemon." When Luisa Tetrazzini was going mad with a flute in our vicinity she varied the monotony of her life by sending pages of her favourite recipes to the Sunday yellow press.
Unfortunately, I neglected to make a collection of this series. A pa.s.sion for cooking caused the death of Naldi, a buffo singer of the early Nineteenth Century. Michael Kelly tells the story: "His ill stars took him to Paris, where, one day, just before dinner, at his friend Garcia"s house, in the year 1821, he was showing the method of cooking by steam, with a portable apparatus for that purpose; unfortunately, in consequence of some derangement of the machinery, an explosion took place, by which he was instantaneously killed." Almost everybody knows some story or other about a _virtuoso_, trapped into dining and asked to perform after dinner by his host. Kelly relates one of the first: "Fischer, the great oboe player, whose minuet was then all the rage ... being very much pressed by a n.o.bleman to sup with him after the opera, declined the invitation, saying that he was usually much fatigued, and made it a rule never to go out after the evening"s performance. The n.o.ble lord would, however, take no denial, and a.s.sured Fischer that he did not ask him professionally, but merely for the gratification of his society and conversation. Thus urged and encouraged, he went; he had not, however, been many minutes in the house of the consistent n.o.bleman, before his lordship approached him, and said, "I hope, Mr. Fischer, you have brought your oboe in your pocket."--"No, my Lord," said Fischer, "my oboe never sups." He turned on his heel, and instantly left the house, and no persuasion could ever induce him to return to it." You perhaps have heard rumours that Giuseppe Campanari prefers _spaghetti_ to Mozart, especially when he cooks it himself. When this baritone was a member of the Metropolitan Opera Company his paraphernalia for preparing his favourite food went everywhere with him on tour. Heinrich Conried (or was it Maurice Grau?) once tried to take advantage of this weakness, according to a story often related by the late Algernon St. John Brenon. Campanari was to appear as Kothner in _Die Meistersinger_, a character with no singing to do after the first act, although he appears in the procession in the third act. The singer told his impressario that he saw no reason why he should remain to the end and explained that he would leave his costume for a chorus man to don to represent him in the final episode. "What would the Master say?" demanded Conried, wringing his hands. "Would he approve of such a proceeding? No. That would not be truth! That would not be art!" Campanari was obdurate.
The Herr Direktor became reflective. He was silent for a moment and then he continued: "If you will stay for the last act you will find in your room a little supper, a bottle of wine, and a box of cigars, which you may consume while you are waiting." In sooth when Campanari entered his dressing room after the first act of Wagner"s comic opera he found that his director had kept his word.... The baritone ate the supper, drank the wine, put the cigars in his pocket ... and went home!
If some singers are good cooks it does not follow that all good cooks are singers. Benjamin Lumley, in his "Reminiscences of the Opera,"
tells the sad story of the Countess of Cannazaro"s cook, which should serve as a lesson to housemaids who are desirous of becoming moving picture stars. "This worthy man, excellent no doubt as a _chef_, took it into his head that he was a vocalist of the highest order, and that he only wanted opportunity to earn musical distinction. His strange fancy came to the knowledge of Rubini, and it was arranged that a performance should take place in the morning, in which the cook"s talent should be fairly tested. Certainly every chance was afforded him. Not only was he encouraged by Rubini and Lablache (whose gravity on the occasion was wonderful), but by a few others, Costa included, as instrumentalists. The failure was miserable, ridiculous, as everybody expected." Frederick Crowest describes a certain Count Castel de Maria who had a spit that played tunes, "and so regulated and indicated the condition of whatever was hung upon it to roast. By a singular mechanical contrivance this wonderful spit would strike up an appropriate tune whenever a joint had hung sufficiently long on its particular roast. Thus, _Oh! the roast beef of Old England_, when a sirloin had turned and hung its appointed time. At another air, a leg of mutton, _a l"Anglaise_ would be found excellent; while some other tune would indicate that a fowl _a la Flamande_ was cooked to a nicety and needed removal from the fowl roast."
To Crowest, too, I am indebted for a list of beverages and eatables which certain singers held in superst.i.tious awe as capable of refreshing their voices. Formes swore by a pot of good porter and Wachtel is said to have trusted to the yolk of an egg beaten up with sugar to make sure of his high Cs. The Swedish tenor, Labatt, declared that two salted cuc.u.mbers gave the voice the true metallic ring.