Cousin Pons Page 3
And yet this worthy man did justice to the famous masters of our time. A fine rendering of a few choice compositions reduced him to tears, but his devotion to music did not reach the verge of mania, as it did with the Kreislers in the Tales of Hoffmann. He made no show of it, but cultivated an inner enjoyment like a hashish-eater or an opium addict. The genius for admiration and understanding, the only faculty by which an ordinary man becomes the brother of a great poet, is so rare in Paris, where ideas tread on one another’s heels like travellers filing into a hostelry, that we must accord respect and esteem to Pons. The man’s lack of success may seem unreasonable, but he naively confessed his weakness as regards harmony. He had neglected the study of counterpoint, and he felt that modern orchestration, which had developed immeasurably, was beyond his grasp, even at the time when renewed studies might have enabled him to keep up with the modern composers and become, not indeed a Rossini, but at any rate a Hérold. To sum up, he found such lively compensation for his failure to reach fame in the pleasures his collecting gave him, that if he had had to choose between the reputation of a Rossini and the possession of his curios – believe it or not – Pons would have preferred his beloved collection. This old musician applied as axiomatic the claim made by Chenavard, that expert collector of priceless engravings: that a work by Ruysdael, Hobbema, Holbein, Raphael, Murillo, Greuze, Sebastian del Piombo, Giorgione or Albrecht Dürer, is only pleasurable to look at when it has not cost more than fifty francs. Pons ruled out all purchases above the sum of a hundred francs. An object had to be worth three thousand francs before he would pay fifty francs for it. The loveliest thing in the world, if it cost three hundred francs, ceased to exist for him. Rarely had he made great bargains, but he possessed the three requisites for success in buying: fleetness of foot, plenty of leisure-time and the patience of an Israelite.
This policy, which he had put into practice for forty years, both in Rome and Paris, had borne fruit. Since his return from Rome, at a cost of about two thousand francs a year, Pons had jealously stored away a collection of all kinds of masterpieces; duly catalogued, they reached the fabulous figure of one thousand nine hundred and seven items. Between 1811 and 1816, while browsing around Paris, he had picked up for ten francs objects which today could only be bought for a thousand or twelve hundred francs. They consisted of pictures sorted out from the forty-five thousand pictures exposed for sale each year in Paris, and Sèvres porcelains in soft paste, bought from the Auvergnat dealers, those satellites of the ‘Black Gang’ who carted away on their barrows the marvels of Madame de Pompadour’s France. In short, he had accumulated the forgotten relics of seventeenth- and eighteenth-century art, giving just recognition to the brilliance and genius of the French School, to those neglected masters Lepautre, Lavallée-Poussin, etc., who created the Louis Quinze and the Louis Seize styles, whose works nowadays provide inspiration for the so-called creations of our artists – those who are for ever poring over the treasures in the Cabinet des Estampes so that they can rise to originality by making clever pastiches. Many of Pons’s pieces were acquired by exchange, a method which brings ineffable bliss to collectors! The pleasure of buying objets d’art is only second to that of getting them by barter. Pons had been first in the field as a collector of snuff-boxes and miniatures. He was scarcely known among the bric-à-brac confraternity, for he did not frequent auctions, nor did he show his face in the prominent dealers’ establishments. And so he was ignorant of the sale value of his treasure.
The late Dusommerard, that prince of the bric-à-brac trade, had tried hard to get in touch with the musician, but he died without ever gaining admission to the Pons museum, which was the only one to be compared with the well-known Sauvageot collection. Pons and Monsieur Sauvageot were not without their similarities. Monsieur Sauvageot, like Pons, was a musician, and had no great fortune. He proceeded in the same way, and followed the same methods; he had the same love of art, and the same hatred for those illustrious rich people who build up collections in slick competition with the dealers. Just like this man – his rival, his emulator and his antagonist in the acquisition of all these prodigies of skill and craftsmanship – Pons was at heart an insatiable miser. He loved them as a man might love a beautiful mistress, and the sale of them under the hammer at auctions in the rue des Jeûneurs seemed to him an act of treason against bric-à-brac. His museum was a thing to be enjoyed at all hours of the day; for those who have it in them to admire great works have the sublime capacity of true lovers for feeling as much bliss today as they did yesterday; they never weary in admiration, and fortunately masterpieces enjoy perpetual youth. And therefore the object which Pons was now carrying with such fatherly care was undoubtedly one of those finds which one bears away, lovingly, as only true amateurs can.
As the first lines of this biographical sketch are traced out, every reader will exclaim: ‘But this person, ugly as he may be, is the happiest man in the world!’ For in truth, to adopt a mania is like applying a poultice to the soul: it can cure any taedium vitae, any spleen. Let all those no longer able to drain what has always been called ‘the cup of joy’ take to collecting something (even advertisement bills), and in this they will find the solid gold of happiness minted into small coinage. A mania is pleasure transmuted into an idea! But no envy should be felt for the worthy Pons: so impulsive a reaction, like all such, would be born of misunderstanding.
This man of such delicate fibre, whose spiritual self was kept alive by his tireless admiration for the splendour of human handiwork, so magnificently vieing with Nature’s own handiwork, was a slave to one of the seven deadly sins, the one which, in all probability, God deals with most leniently. Pons was a gormandizer. His poverty and his craving for bric-à-brac restricted him to a diet so repugnant to his sensitive palate, that, as a bachelor, he had solved the problem from the start by dining out every evening. Now, in Imperial times, much more than in our days, notable people were much sought after, perhaps because they were scarce and had few political ambitions. It was so easy to be a poet, a writer or a musician! People looked on Pons as a potential rival of such men as Nicolo, Paër and Berton, and therefore he had so many invitations that he was obliged, like a barrister, to keep an engagement-book. Moreover he played his part as an artiste; he presented all his hosts with copies of his ballads; he ‘played on the ivories’ in their drawing-rooms; he brought them tickets for boxes at the Feydeau theatre for which he worked, he organized concerts, and sometimes even improvised dances in the homes of his relatives, with himself as fiddler.
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In those days it was a common occurrence for the most handsome men of France to exchange sabre-cuts with the most handsome men of the Coalition. Consequently the ugliness of Pons was reckoned as originality, in accordance with the great principle set forth by Molière’s Eliante:
They count a blemish as a beauty spot
And find perfection where we find a blot.
When Pons had rendered a service to some elegant lady, he was occasionally qualified as a charming man – not that this compliment was ever followed by a more tangible reward.
This period lasted about six years, from 1810 to 1816, and Pons got into the disastrous habit of dining well, of seeing his hosts sparing no expense, procuring out-of-season delicacies, uncorking their best wines, taking pains over the dessert, the coffee and the liqueurs, regaling him as best they could, as was customary in the Empire period, when many private houses copied the lavishness of the kings, queens and princes then teeming in Paris. It was fashionable then to ape royalty, just as today one apes Parliament by forming all sorts of societies complete with chairmen, vice-chairmen and secretaries: societies of flax-growers, vine-growers, silk-growers; agricultural and industrial societies; and so forth. We have even got to the point of discovering social ills in order to form societies to cure them! Now when a stomach gets such schooling, the moral person is affected, is corrupted by the high degree of culinary knowledge thus acquired. Sensual pleasure worms its way i
nto every recess of the heart, establishes itself as sovereign, makes inroads into will-power and sense of honour, demands satisfaction at all costs. The exigencies of gluttony have never been depicted; literary critics have to live, and they keep off such themes; but one can hardly imagine how many people have been brought to ruin by the pleasures of the table. In Paris, in this respect, the table competes with the trollop; incidentally, the former represents the credit side, the latter the debit side of the account. When Pons, sinking lower and lower as an artist, degenerated from the position of habitual guest to that of a sponger, he could not bear the thought of quitting these well-served boards for the Spartan gruel of a cheap restaurant. Poor man, he shuddered at the thought that dependence on his own resources would entail such great sacrifices, and he felt capable of the greatest cowardice so long as he could still enjoy good fare, smack his lips over all the season’s first-fruits, and mop up (a coarse but expressive verb) exquisite little dishes. He hopped about like a bird, filling his crop, and piped a note or two by way of payment. He also derived some pleasure from living well at the expense of society people who after all asked for nothing but flattery in return. Like all bachelors who hate dining in and love dining out, he was conversant with the meaningless phrases and social grimaces which, in polite society, do duty for genuine feeling, and he dealt round compliments like small change. As for those he received, he was content to read the label without examining the contents.
This fairly tolerable phase lasted ten years more, but they were like a succession of rainy autumns. All this time, Pons enjoyed a free table by making himself useful in the various houses he frequented. He started on the downward path by carrying out numerous errands, on many occasions doing the jobs of porters and household staff. Entrusted with many purchases, he became the honest simpleton sent forth by one family to spy on another; but he earned no gratitude for so many services rendered and so much self-abasement. ‘Pons is a bachelor,’ they said; ‘he has nothing to do with his time and is only too glad to trot about for us… What else could he do?’
Before long there could be sensed that chilly atmosphere which an old man spreads about him: a cold wind which blows all round and has its effect on the moral temperature, especially when the old man in question is poor and ugly. Old age in triplicate! The winter of life: red nose, hollow cheeks and numbed fingers!
Between 1836 and 1843, Pons was rarely invited out. He was no longer an acquisition, but a hanger-on. Each family put up with him as one puts up with rates and taxes. The families in which he performed his party tricks had no respect for the arts, bowed down only before tangible success, and attached importance only to what they had themselves acquired since 1830 – bank balances and high social position. Now Pons had neither the loftiness of spirit nor of manner to inspire that awe which wit or genius can arouse in the middle classes, and so in the end he had naturally become of no account, though he was not as yet completely despised. He suffered keenly in the society he frequented, but kept his sufferings to himself. Then, by degrees, he had got used to bottling up his feelings and retiring into the sanctuary of his own heart. Many shallow people would put this phenomenon down to egoism. So strong is the resemblance between the solitary man and the egoist that spiteful tongues can always make a case against a sensitive person, particularly in Parisian society, where no one is really observant, where life rushes by like a torrent, where everything is as transient as governments.
That is why Cousin Pons was found guilty – by a retrospective verdict – of self-centredness. When society accuses, it always condemns. Do we realize how overwhelming unmerited disfavour can be to shy people? Who will ever depict the woes they suffer? The predicament of this poor musician became worse every day. It accounts for the sadness we have seen imprinted on his countenance. Abject humiliations became his daily fare. But the acts of self-abasement which every passion demands are like so many bonds. The more of them the satisfaction of a craving imposes, the more one is enslaved. Such a craving converts every act of self-sacrifice into an imaginary treasure – a minus quantity – and this the victim looks on as being infinite wealth. After tolerating the insolently patronizing glance of some starkly stupid self-made man, Pons took his revenge by sipping his glass of port and savouring his caille au gratin, telling himself the while: ‘It’s not too dear at the price!’
For the moral observer, however, there were extenuating circumstances in this mode of life. In truth, a man only lives by the satisfaction he obtains for himself. Your passionless man, your righteous man, is a freak of nature, a burgeoning angel whose wings have not yet sprouted. In Catholic mythology cherubs have a head and nothing more. On earth the righteous man takes the form of a tedious Grandison, in whose eyes even a Venus of the streets would be sexless. Now Pons had never won a woman’s favour – except for the few commonplace successes, due no doubt to climatic factors, which he had had with women during his Italian travels. Such is the inevitable destiny of many men. Pons was a freak from birth. His father and mother had come by him in old age, and the stigmata of this untimely conception showed forth in his cadaverous complexion, which seemed to have been acquired in the jar of spirits of wine used by embryologists to preserve certain abnormal foetuses. This artist, so tender, dreamy, delicate of soul, was forced to accept the character which his countenance imposed upon him; he despaired of ever being loved. So he was a bachelor less by choice than by necessity. Gourmandise, a sin to which even virtuous monks are addicted, opened its arms to him: he flung himself into them as he had flung himself into the worship of masterpieces and devotion to music. The small change of good food and bric-à-brac stood him in lieu of a woman’s affection – for music was merely his profession, and few men are found who love the profession they live by. In the long run, any profession is like the married state: only its drawbacks are perceived.
Brillat-Savarin, in his Physiologie du Goût, took it upon himself to justify the tastes of gastronomes. But perhaps he did not sufficiently emphasize the essential pleasure of the table. The digestive process brings all the human forces into play. It is a kind of inner combat which, for those who make a god of their bellies, gives as much enjoyment as sexual intercourse. The vital functions are involved on so wide a scale that the brain abdicates in favour of a second brain seated in the diaphragm, and intoxication ensues through the very inertia of all our faculties. Boa constrictors, when they have gorged down a bull, become so intoxicated that they are easy to kill. What man over forty dares settle down to work after a good dinner? This accounts for the sobriety of all great men. Convalescents who are recovering from a serious illness, and to whom a carefully chosen diet is so sparingly meted out, may often experience a sort of tipsiness caused by the mere consumption of a chicken-wing. Pons was wise in this respect: his every enjoyment was centred upon his gastronomic activities. He was continually in the position of such convalescents: good fare had to provide him with all the sensual pleasure it can give; and so far it had not failed to do so. No one dares to say good-bye to his daily habits. Many intending suicides have halted on the threshold of death at the thought of the café in which they are wont, every evening, to play their game of dominoes.
3. The two ‘Nutcrackers’
IN 1835, a lucky chance compensated Pons for the coldness of the fair sex, and gave him something to lean on in his old age. He had been an old man from the cradle, and friendship provided him with a prop: he contracted what was for him the only kind of marriage possible in his situation – wedlock with a man, an elderly man, a musician like himself. But for La Fontaine’s wonderful fable, the title of this sketch would have been The Two Friends. But would that not have been a literary impropriety, a profanation from which any reputable author would shrink? The fabulist’s masterpiece, at once an intimate confession and a revelation of his dreams, must for ever enjoy the privilege of this title. The page on whose pediment he engraved these three words: The Two Friends, is his inviolable property, a temple which men of every generation and
every country will reverently visit as long as the printed word subsists.
Sylvain’s friend was a piano teacher, whose life and manners concorded so well with his that he professed he had known him too late for his happiness – their acquaintanceship, which had begun at a prize-giving in a boarding-school, only dated from 1834. Never, perhaps, in the sea of humanity which, against the Divine will, welled up from the terrestrial paradise, had two souls found themselves so alike. In a short space these two musicians became necessary to one another. Each one of them being sure of the other, in a week they became like twin brothers. In short, Schmucke had no more believed that a Pons could exist than Pons had suspected the existence of a Schmucke. This alone would suffice to depict these two worthy people, but every type of mind cannot appreciate so summary a synthesis. Some measure of illustration is needed for the incredulous.
This pianist, like all pianists, was a German: a German like the great Liszt and the great Mendelssohn, a German like Steibelt, a German like Mozart and Dusseck, a German like Meyer, a German like Doelher, a German like Thalberg, Dreschok, Hiller, Leopold Mayer, Crammer, Zimmermann, Kalkbrenner, like Herz, Woëtz, Karr, Wolff, Pixis, Clara Wieck, and more specifically, like all Germans. Schmucke was a great composer, but he could be no more than a demonstrator of his art because, by nature, he was so incapable of the boldness needed for a man of genius to manifest his musical quality. The ingenuousness of many Germans does not continue indefinitely: they manage to shed it. If at a certain age any of it has remained in them, it has been piped, as water for a canal is piped, from the springs of youth in them. They use it to fertilize their success in various spheres – science, art, or finance – and to avert mistrust. In France, some wily people affect instead the obtuseness of a Paris grocer. But Schmucke had kept all his childish ingenuousness: in like manner Pons, without realizing it, had retained in his person vestiges of Imperial times. This true and noble German was at once both orchestra and audience: he performed music for his own hearing. He lived in Paris like a nightingale in a forest; unique of his kind, he had been singing there for twenty years before he found an alter ego in Pons.