Travels in France—Academic Correspondence: First letter—Marseilles

Summary

To Monsieur Monnais, Academician at Large

Marseilles—A concert—The coachman—His conversation—His post-horn— The happy music-lover—The unhappy music-lover

Paris, 18 …

I got up “with the rising sun, hale and hearty, full of fun”, just like the financier in Les Prétendus, that masterpiece of grotesque flannel which eclipsed Iphigenia in Tauris at the box-office, bringing Lemoine (for Lemoine it was who composed Les Prétendus) more money than all of Gluck’s operas put together. Further proof that one day succeeds another just like the day before.

So I feel up to writing you a whole string of nonsense. It all comes from the extravagant dream to which I was treated by our friend Queen Mab. I dreamt I had six hundred million francs, and between evening and morning, by means of irresistible arguments, I had engaged the services of all the talented singers and instrumentalists in the whole of Paris, London and Vienna, including Jenny Lind and Pischek, for my own personal gratification. The result was that all the opera houses in those three capitals had to close immediately.

You were the general in command of my musical forces; we understood each other wonderfully well. We had a magnificent theatre and a splendid concert hall, where, twice a month only, masterpieces were performed exactly as their authors wrote them, with hitherto unheard-of fidelity, pomp, grandeur and inspiration. We picked the audiences ourselves, and not for anything in the world would we have let in any of the cretins of whom there are so many. One of them, who for the sake of his self-respect had bribed an usher and sneaked himself into a box for 50,000 francs, was spotted by the performers just as the first act of Alceste was about to start, and forced to leave to a chorus of jeers. You were hopping mad; I felt sorry for the poor chap, feeling his humiliation was excessive, and it would have been simpler to get four stewards to remove him without so much fuss.

And we spoke Dr. Johnson’s English, and had Shakespeare’s plays performed in our theatre, without corrections or cuts, by Brooke, Macready and the leading actors of the three kingdoms; and we were dizzy with admiration.