X
RESIDENCE IN PARIS
Singing lessons resumed · Maître Duprez · The school in the Rue Laval · In the house of the Princess Mingrelia · In the imperial box at the opera · Summer at Duprez’s place in the country · Return to Paris · Princess Salomé’s engagement · Prince Achille Murat · The wedding · With the young couple · Off to Baden-Baden
At the beginning of the year 1867 we traveled to Paris.
But, I remember, of the powerful impression which it must produce on every one to come for the first time to the mighty metropolis about which one has heard and read so much,—of this impression I felt very little, my mind was so full of the “one important thing.” Even the prospect of the pleasure of meeting the Dadiani family of Mingrelia again here did not come so close to me; the only thing that I could think about, that made me tremble with terror and excitement, was the question, How will Maître Duprez judge of my voice, what progress shall I make, and what shape will my artistic career take?
The maestro owned a mansion on the Rue Laval, in which was a hall with a stage. Adjacent were small study-rooms in which the maestro and his son, Léon Duprez, gave private instruction. Every Friday the more advanced students gave arias and scenes from operas on the stage, and the little theater was filled with an audience of their friends and of strangers from outside. On the other side of the court was a small hôtel used as a residence by the Duprez family, which consisted of the father and mother, the son and daughter-in-law.
At our first visit in the Rue Laval we were conducted into the theater building. First we went into a small waiting-room, around the walls of which ran bookcases full of opera scores. Students of both sexes were sitting and standing about, chatting. In the theater too a few scattered individuals were sitting and listening to the performance of a quite young girl who, with the accompanist of the establishment, Monsieur Maton, was practicing the Rosina aria, Una voce poco fa. Monsieur Maton had written out most artistic colorature for her; it purled and warbled like anything.
So then this school enables one to reach such a bravura! It inspired me with courage and the resolution to be very industrious.
Still, what verdict would the maestro pass on me after the test?—surely not like the severe Viardot. With quaking heart I mounted the steps to the stage, behind which was the room where M. Duprez was waiting for me. A benevolent old gentleman, well along toward eighty, but lively and vigorous, came to meet me. He had white curly hair, ruddy cheeks, and smiling eyes.
“Well, mademoiselle, so it was you who wrote me that enthusiastic letter, was it? You want to be something great or else nothing at all, do you? Well, then, let me hear how your voice sounds, and see if you can read notes.”
He handed me a book of original solfeggios and sat down at the upright piano. This time the test resulted favorably.
“Beautiful voice; I shall be able to make something of you—in two years you shall be la première force.”
I was happy, simply happy! Now the hours of instruction were settled; I was to have lessons twice a week. That was not enough for me.
“I should like to come every day, maestro.”
“You may do that; on the other days my son or M. Maton will practice with you. But I have only two hours a week, that is to say, half hours, to spare; that is quite enough.”
We rented and furnished a small flat in the Rue Laval, and forthwith began for me an active epoch of study, bright with hope. I spent all my forenoons in the theater building of the Hôtel Duprez, always accompanied by my mother, a thing which seemed rather tiresome and superfluous to the others who frequented the school. I put myself wholly into the do, re, mi, and into a little aria which the maestro had composed and which he gave me to study for my first piece. But I felt especial interest in my fellow-pupils, who were on the most various levels of ability; and the Friday performances, as I did not yet participate in them, were to me a great enjoyment. When later I myself had to sing up there it was an agony to me, to be sure; for the old nervousness came over me again, and I won no applause. But this did not take place till after the lapse of some time; for the present I was busied only with learning, and I went at it in joyous mood.
In the public recitals there participated also some of the maestro’s finished pupils who were already filling engagements at the theaters and had attained celebrity: the tenor Engel (known as Angèl); Mademoiselle Marimon, the chanteuse légère of the Opéra Comique in Paris; and Jeanne Devriès of Brussels,—all three artists of the first rank. A young sister of the last-named, Fidès Devriès, had begun taking lessons only a short time before, and was the favorite of the maestro, the admiration of the whole class. She filled me with green-eyed envy. She was pretty as a picture—I could have forgiven her that, but she was sixteen years old, which put my twenty-three to shame, and she was making such rapid strides that although she had been in the school only a short time she already sang like a virtuoso and without the slightest nervousness. Ultimately she was engaged at the Paris Grand Opera, where she made her début as Ophelia with huge success. When I witnessed with what facility young Fidès learned the most difficult coloratures, with what correctness she read at sight, what peculiar magic dwelt in the timbre of her voice, and with what freedom and assurance of victory she moved on the little stage, always greeted and rewarded with the applause of the listeners and teachers, I was compelled to say to myself: “That is talent, that is the special gift, that is the something that lies beyond ambition and industry, which one cannot attain but must have, and which I have not....”
I was in and out of the house of the Princess of Mingrelia a great deal. I did not divulge to her anything of my artistic plans. She supposed the “Contessina” had come to Paris merely for the sake of being with her and her daughter, and she invited me to all her dinners and receptions. Together with her family and a numerous body of servants she occupied a suite in the Hôtel du Louvre, with private entrance and private stairway. In the long array of reception rooms, and especially in the salon filled with flowers and bric-a-brac where she usually kept herself, there was once more the odor of Russian cigarettes and orange flowers. I felt myself transported back to the Weckerlin villa at Homburg, and could not help thinking of my infatuation for the Georgian prince, the Bagratide Heraclius. I inquired about him.
“What! Is his picture still alive in your heart, little Contessina? Well, he is soon coming to Paris ... and if you can’t have him, we will find another husband here for you, for it is high time you were married—twenty-three already, that is almost being an old maid! I shall marry off my Salomé before she gets to be twenty; only it is a pity, dearest, that you have not a good big dot. That is the main question here in Paris. Grace and beauty do not suffice. Salomé is to get an income of fifty thousand francs, a present that her brother Niko gives her; with that it will be an easier matter to find a good parti. And I already have my eye on some one, a member of the imperial family.”
“Of Russia?”
“No, of France.”
The princess and her daughter never missed any of the Empress Eugénie’s petits lundis, and the Empress herself had proposed the marriage plan to which the Dedopali referred. She would not say anything more definite about it just then, and even Salomé, whom I questioned, professed to know nothing at all of the matter.
The imperial box at the opera was frequently put at the disposal of the two ladies, and they often invited me to accompany them. One morning, when I came to my lesson at the music school, young Madame Duprez called to me:
“Were you at the opera yesterday evening?”
“Yes; Madame Sass was a splendid Valentine.”
“So that was you, was it? In the Emperor’s box?”
“Yes,” I replied, inwardly amused, in a tone as if it were my usual habit to occupy such places and no others at the theater. I felt that the incident made an impression on the whole school; evidently they were not in the habit of seeing the pupils in the monarch’s box. In the Mingrelian salon, on the other hand, my musical performances made a great impression again; there they were evidently not in the habit of seeing dilettantes sit down to the piano and treat the company to concert waltzes and colorature arias. Little—say, petty—gratifications of vanity.
The expected Prince Heraclius of Georgia did not come to Paris. Probably if he had come the flame in my heart would have flared up again, and the ambitious dream of becoming a great lady might have displaced that of the “great artist”; all the more because doubts about my talent kept growing upon me, the wretched nervousness refused to be overcome, and when I performed on the experimental stage I was unable to make a real success. Only my mother kept stimulating my courage and ambition; the maestro, too, promised that in a year or two of study he should form me into a superior artist, and I persevered.
The next summer (the Mingrelian family had gone off to the German watering-places again) we betook ourselves to the Duprez country estate, to continue the instruction there, it being interrupted in the school at Paris. In October we went back to the city, and the Mingrelian family too moved into the Hôtel du Louvre again. The old life of the preceding year was repeated: artistic interests and enjoyments in the Rue Laval, social interests and enjoyments with my Asiatic friends.
One day toward the end of the winter I received from Princess Salomé a dispatch: “Enjoy my good fortune with me; I have just become engaged to Prince Achille Murat.” On the same day she had sent me a card by mail, which I received a few hours later than the telegram. The little yellowed forty-year-old card is still among my old papers. I reproduce it in full:
de Mingrélie
Ma bien bonne Contesco, venez demain
à deux heures précises—vous passerez
la journée avec nous. J’ai une foule de choses
très pressées à faire et je m’adresse à
vous comme à mon amie dévouée, pour vous demander
votre aide. Ne m’oubliez pas auprès de Mme.
votre mère. Soyez bien exacte.
I joyously obeyed the summons—there is nothing in the world more interesting to young girls than an engagement—and found the whole house in happy excitement.
I was told how it all came about. The affair, contemplated during the preceding winter by the Empress Eugénie and the Princess Ekaterina, had been brought to a satisfactory conclusion the week before. The Emperor undertook to provide his nephew with an allowance of fifty thousand francs a year, which excellently comported with the bride’s similar income; he also agreed to pay the young man’s debts.—Well, yes, debts—it was known to the whole town that he was one of the most extravagant high-livers in Paris. Among the diamonds of the then so celebrated “belle Hélène,” Hortense Schneider, were many jewels which Prince Achille Murat had laid at her feet. The prince was regarded as one of the handsomest of the young people in high society. The son of Prince Lucien and an American woman, he very much reminded one of an Englishman in his manner, in his accent, and in the blond type of his face. All this I knew from hearsay before the news of the betrothal came to me.
I found the fiancée busily engaged in sending announcements of her good fortune to all her St. Petersburg and Parisian acquaintances, and I must needs help her address the envelopes. She was really happy. To be sure the whole affair was arranged by the relatives on both sides, and she had seen her fiancé only three or four times; but in those circles, especially in France, they are used to having marriages contracted in this way. And the dazzling appearance of her suitor when introduced to her had thrown a spell over her: she was genuinely in love with the young man, and heartily enjoyed the thought of becoming “Princesse Achille Murat.”
Now she had before her also the interesting task of making up the trousseau, of superintending the appointments of a little palais in the Elysée quarter, and of receiving the wedding gifts, the first installment of which had appeared that very day in a “river of diamonds” that her own mother had given her, and a pearl necklace which her fiancé had laid at her feet. So she had, as the old song[17] puts it, “diamonds and pearls”; she had beautiful eyes as well, a twofold princely crown, a hundred thousand francs of income, her nineteen years, and a handsome husband: “Darling, what more would you have?” To me also all this seemed at that time like the pinnacle of human happiness, and I honestly rejoiced with my friend. Later, much later, I learned that there is something “more” than all that, that there is a happiness which in its inward depth, even in very limited circumstances, is more radiant than any external glory, any affluence. Oh, my unspeakable married bliss ... but I will not anticipate.
On that same day I became acquainted with Salomé’s fiancé; before that time he had been no frequent visitor at the house. The first call which he had made, a few days previously, had been connected with the ceremonious proposal for the hand of his chosen. “Chosen” is the wrong expression; I should have said “the lady intended for him.” He pleased me very well—twenty-one years of age, exceedingly tall and slender in figure, a thin blond imperial, dazzling teeth, faultlessly elegant and assured behavior. It must be confessed, not a trace of tenderness: as he preserved a severely correct, not to say chillingly ceremonious, behavior toward every one, so he did even toward his betrothed.
Every morning, from that time forth, came the traditional great bouquet of flowers, sent to the house by a messenger, and in the afternoon appeared the suitor himself to faire son cour for a brief hour.
The wedding was celebrated in the early days of May, 1868. A wedding which embraced three separate ceremonies,—first the civil service in the mairie, then a forenoon wedding according to the Catholic rite in the Tuileries, in the presence of the Emperor and Empress, and at nine o’clock that same evening in the Greek church according to the Orthodox rite. I participated in this last ceremony as first bridesmaid. My function consisted in holding a crown over the bride’s head during the whole marriage service. An illustrious company filled the brightly lighted, flower-decorated chapel. The ladies’ toilets were of great magnificence. The bride wore a veil which had been made for her at Brussels, with her family arms, the Golden Fleece, woven into its fabric. It flowed down from a diadem of diamonds, the Empress Eugénie’s wedding gift. The bride’s mother was adorned with the stars and ribbons of various orders. Among the jewels that were here displayed, I was especially struck by the historic set of emeralds which the bridegroom’s sister, the celebrated beauty Anne Murat, the wife of the Duc de Mouchy-Noailles, had put on in honor of this solemn occasion.
And is it not to a certain extent humiliating that I myself on this occasion allowed the parade of toilets and jewelry to sink so deep into my mind that at this day I can still see it all? I will even confess that I remember what I myself wore,—a gown made by Worth, of white gauze over rose-colored silk lining, garnished with innumerable little volants from the waist to the train—it is to be hoped that at that important and solemn hour when my friend stood before the altar to be dedicated to an unknown destiny, I thought of something besides those many little spangles; but it is a fact that I still see the rose-pink shimmer rippling through the white threads of the gauze.
After the wedding there was a small ball at the princess’s. The innumerable volants had an opportunity to whirl around in the dance, and I remember that my partner in the first quadrille was a Prince Bourbon. The newly wedded pair had disappeared from the festivity early and unobserved. They had decided not to take a wedding journey; they took up their residence at once in their newly furnished petit hôtel in the Rue de Pressbourg.
There I spent many hours. Salomé usually invited me to dinner, and I was expected to come an hour earlier so that we might have time to chat before the husband and the guests should appear. After dinner, especially when we three were alone, we usually went to some one of the so-called petits théâtres, which Salomé was not allowed to attend before she was married, and which it now gave her much amusement to become acquainted with. I ought not by rights to have been taken along either, being still unmarried; but, in the first place, now that I was twenty-four years old I was no longer included in the category of young girls, and in the next place, in the baignoire we were invisible to the general public.
My friend seemed to feel very happy; at least she was always cheerful and in good humor, and took delight in all the festivities and receptions that were held in her honor in the circle of her new family, at court, at her husband’s parents’, at the Mouchys’. She took me with her to her relatives, and so I shared in many of these entertainments. But the season soon drew to an end, summer was upon us, and society scattered.
The young couple went first for a few weeks to the ducal château of Mouchy, and planned to be at Baden-Baden for the rest of the season. Hereupon I urged my mother that we too should go to Baden-Baden. During the last part of the time I had greatly neglected my singing lessons in the Duprez school; it was becoming clearer and clearer to me that I had not such great talent as I had imagined, and I hoped in my secret heart that a sojourn in the great world’s splendid watering-place, where I should be included in my friend’s circle, might perhaps turn my fate in a different and happier direction. My mother may have cherished the same hope, or else she felt a drawing to the trente-et-quarante bank in order once more to test whether the old gift of divination might not make its appearance even now; in brief, we started off for Baden-Baden.